Kandice Kardell is an American visual artist and educator originally from the Arizona desert, where the vastness, textures, and material conditions of the landscape continue to inform her work. Since 2021, she has been based in Portugal, living and working near the sea—an ongoing geographical shift that shapes her engagement with land, water, and ecological process.

Her practice brings into being quiet forms of attunement that move between image, object, and place. Working with solar printing, fiber, foraged algae, algae-based bioplastics, and plant-derived dyes, Kardell allows materials, environments, and process to mutually absorb and respond to one another. Through acts of weaving, stitching, exposure, and decay, her work unifies human presence with land and sea. Artworks emerge through erosion and care, sometimes remaining temporary or site-responsive by design.

Guided by ecological grief and the philosophy of un-selfing, Kardell’s work embraces impermanence and the more-than-human. It invites viewers to encounter mortality and loss not as endpoints, but as shared ecological processes unfolding through cycles of transformation and return.

Kardell holds a bachelor’s degree in art and a master’s degree in English. She began her career as a teaching artist, working with diverse immigrant and refugee communities in the United States, experiences that shaped her belief in art as a universal language capable of crossing cultural and linguistic boundaries. Her background in linguistics and education led her to integrate art into language instruction and interdisciplinary learning across university and K–12 settings.

Her work has been exhibited regionally, nationally, and internationally in both solo and group exhibitions, and is held in private collections in the United States and abroad. Alongside her studio practice, Kardell continues to teach and collaborate on arts-integration and cultural mediation projects worldwide, exploring the intersections of art, education, ecology, and communication.