Seated at her childhood dinner table, Roopali Kambo could be found flipping through the pages of magazines like Architectural Digest. These publications were ordinary place settings within her family as her parents and siblings pursued architecture in their careers. As an architect’s daughter, Kambo appreciated the modernity of Frank Lloyd Wright’s “geometric stained glass windows,” and family vacations always centered on what new structures could be seen.

“If I see a painting and the perspective is off, that’s the first and only thing I see,” laughs Kambo. “I can just hear my dad going, ‘Where’s your vanishing points? What happened to the perspective? That’s going to fall over.’” These experiences have carried over into Kambo’s life as a painter and graphic design professor at Tallahassee Community College. As an artist, it’s greatly impacted how she views form and shape, which she hopes attendees will experience in her works “Quest for Wisdom” and “Untethered” at the TCC Art Faculty Exhibit this September.

“[Untethered] has a lot of greenery and foliage, with two men walking and all you can see are their backs,” describes Kambo, who says the vegetation reminds her of monsoon season in both her native India and Florida. “They have water pitchers balanced on their heads, and there’s this camaraderie in this old world. I want to walk with them.”

Kambo can recall her sense of wonder after receiving her first box of Crayola 64- count crayons and the swirling pigments of the tie-dye she made in school. Her primary medium uses acrylic on canvas, though she will often handle acrylics like watercolors, going for a softer look overall and utilizing mixed media and gold leaf to texturize.

“In my design, color can accentuate and augment a message, and in my painting it can change a message completely,” said Kambo. “I’ve never shied away from very rich colors, whether it’s as accents or imbued completely in vibrant colors for the emotion it conveys.”

A graphic designer by training and vocation, Kambo has always been passionate about art. She experimented with everything from ceramics to fabrics before settling on painting as her primary medium. She attended the University of Tennessee for her BFA and Purdue University for her MFA, beginning her career as a communications professional in the Supreme Court of Florida and other state offices.

Eventually, Kambo transitioned into working as a professor at Florida State University for seven years before taking on her currentposition at TCC. She imparts her passion for design to her students each semester,partnering with the City of Tallahassee to provide them with real-world applications for their skills. When it comes to her tandemprofessions, she feels painting and design enrich and support one another, and hopes to devote more research to analyzing ancient scripts alongside recent technology like design typography.

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