Kim Beck grew up in Colorado and currently lives in Pittsburgh. She has exhibited widely including at the Walker Art Center, the Carnegie Museum of Art, Smack Mellon, PS1, Socrates Sculpture Park, and Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center. She recently completed a temporary public installation with The High Line in New York City. She has participated in residencies at the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, the Marie Walsh Sharpe Space Program, the International Studio & Curatorial Program, Cité Internationale des Arts, Vermont Studio Center, and VCCA. She has received awards from ARS Electronica, Heinz Foundation, Pollock-Krasner, Thomas J. Watson Foundation, Sprout Fund,  and Pittsburgh Foundation and her artist's book, A Field Guide to Weeds, was published by Printed Matter through its Emerging Artist Publishing Program and is in its second edition. Beck received her MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and BA from Brandeis University. She is an Associate Professor of Art at Carnegie Mellon University.

I look at eyesores in the landscape. Sometimes these things are avoided, overlooked, or literally stepped over, such as weeds in the sidewalk, or ignored because of their ubiquity, like “everything-must-go!” banners or fast-food signs along the highway. I wonder what happens when these are moved from the margins or periphery and made noticeable as drawings or installations. Through the process of repositioning and remaking, the work elicits questions about perception, emptiness and accumulation. It also weighs an aversion for commercialization and homogenization of the landscape with an appreciation for the awkwardness and surprising idiosyncrasy of these same spaces. In every parking lot there is a parking lot island with a badly pruned tree. Despite the asphalt, the tree is quirky and shows pluck. By drawing attention to these moments, my work brings the banal and everyday into focus.