Stormie King: Challenge Yourself, Make Art, Get to Work

I agree with the common sentiment that Mondays are one of the saddest days of the week, but for Amherst College students, Monday also brings the promise of laughter thanks to Mr. Gad’s House of Improv, Amherst’s self-described “best, worst, and only improvisational comedy group.” And if your late-night plans on Mondays include finding time to go to the weekly Gad’s show, then chances are that you know Stormie King ’25. King is the current director of the improv group; offstage, she is also an avid artist and a caring and creative architectural design student. With her deep passion for the arts, both on and off the stage, King’s journey in Amherst is a testament to the positive lessons she shares with us: don’t be scared of doing something you’ve never tried before, and, above all, do what you love.  

Always on Stage, but Always More 

King called herself “super nerdy” from the very beginning of her academic career — all the way back to her high school years in Arkansas. She remembered her time in high school with joy and nostalgia, always returning to the excitement of attending national speech and debate tournaments as well as being part of countless school theater productions, thespian festivals, and other endeavors on stage. “The preparations for school shows and competitions were long,” she said, “but they were also super fun and nerdy. I loved it.” As the president of both her high school’s Thespians Theater Troupe and speech and debate team, King described her high school life as “one-track minded,” always focused on keeping a life on-stage alive. But her life is much more than just a “single-track.” When not on stage, she was a smoothie shop “bowl-rista,” a consistent volunteer for community service and academic events, a club leader, an ACT tutor, and even the actor behind many fairytale princesses at children’s birthday parties. King’s high school life demonstrated her many talents and devotion to do what she loves: not only performing on stage, but also being a leader and helper of the community. 

It Began With “The Tempest”

King’s experience with the  2020 pandemic began with one of the most famous depictions of a storm:  William Shakespeare’s “The Tempest.” King, then a junior in high school, was part of a school production of the play when everything shut down only two weeks away from the opening night. She described her relationship to the pandemic as  “two-fold.” Like the play, what started with a horrible storm eventually ended with clarity and hope. 

Since pandemic restrictions made it more difficult to visit schools in person, King faced the “crazy experience” of hunting for the right school online, which is how she found Amherst. As the youngest sister with two siblings who went to college in Arkansas and Tennessee, King had to explain to her parents what going to a “liberal arts college” meant and why it was the right fit. King told me she wanted to pursue architectural studies but liked, above all, the opportunity to explore different areas of interest.

While the pandemic was not an easy part of anyone’s life, King eventually started to see the “two-foldedness” in it, viewing it as a source of inspiration rather than an obstruction. Years later, her thesis would imagine the construction of a monument to remember and honor all the 7.2 million people who passed from the disease. What once was a major challenge became, at a different time, an uplifting inspiration, but this process of understanding was one that took time, and came only as a result of her experiences in Amherst. 

A Big Jump 

As anyone would expect, the move from Arkansas to Massachusetts was also affected by the pandemic. Besides the major geographical, cultural, and political shifts Amherst entailed, King’s plans for a smooth move-in experience took a complete turn when her father, who was supposed to help her settle into college, tested positive for Covid. Moving to Amherst became a whirlwind of getting things together: buying new plane tickets to accompany her mother and even explaining to a Transportation Security Administration agent what a pink salt lamp was doing in her carry-on bag. She jokingly described her first year as an “enjoyable” experience: constantly testing for Covid at the health clinic, taking lectures outdoors, never really knowing what the people in her classroom looked like, and guessing whether she had already met the people she was talking to at parties and Val or not. “You think you are going to college to meet all these nice, cool people, and going to parties, or gathering events,” she explained, “but the reality was that we were all wearing masks or had them wrapped around our wrists. We were worried. And most of the time, they did turn out to be spreader events, and we always returned to quarantine.” 

While a good social life had, undeniably, been an understandable expectation of shifting from high school to college, King also chose Amherst for academic reasons. King came to Amherst thinking she’d be a French and architectural studies (ARCH) major. After taking four semesters of French and nearly completing the major, she realized that being a French major wasn’t her calling. While she praised all her French professors and the classes they taught, she explained to me that by the end of her sophomore year, she realized that  “taking four more classes, just to complete the major, wasn’t something [she] wanted to do.” Her passions were simply elsewhere.  

In the spring of her freshman year, King took “Drawing II,” which — though not her first studio art class ever, as King had taken plenty of art classes in high school — was her first Art and the History of Art (ARHA) class in Amherst. The course’s instructor, a Visiting Lecturer in ARHA, Gabriel Phipps, asked her, “Stormie, aren’t you an art major? You should think about becoming one if you aren’t.” King recalled feeling flattered: “When you are 18, and a professor tells you you are good at something, you can’t help but feel like they might be right.” 

Still, she felt constant pressure from her friends and family to make her time at Amherst “worth it.” King wasn’t sure that being an ARHA and ARCH major would fulfill their expectations. She worried that being an ARHA major wouldn’t be “serious enough,” that it wouldn’t allow her “to do something big and serious with [her] time here.” But after a few more classes, King felt surrounded by students and professors “equally talented and driven,” which pushed her to strive for more and think about things differently — ARHA was a competitive, serious, and stimulating environment with other students and professors who “were incredibly talented and well-established in their respective fields.” After some time, King also realized that being an ARCH and ARHA double-major wasn’t in the slightest redundant or showing just a single talent that she had. On the contrary, “having the studio art component, helped me realize that I have tactile skills, an ability to come up with a new visual outline, rather than just being an architecture historian.” 

The jump from Arkansas to Amherst and French to ARHA was big, but for King, her challenges always inspired her to keep doing what her heart told her to do.  

“Inspiration Is For Amateurs. Printmakers Get To Work.”

Among the art classes that led King to pursue ARHA was Senior Resident Artist Betsey A. Garand’s class, “Studio Art,” which she took in the fall of her sophomore year.  King had just gotten a job, joined Gad’s, and began feeling the demand of the rigorous academic courses she was taking. Juggling all these responsibilities felt difficult, but King went into her mid-semester art critique with Garand feeling good — like she had done just enough. Garand, however, pulled her aside after class and told her, “Stormie, you haven’t done enough art. I know you are busy, but really, everybody’s busy.” 

Though it was a cold wake-up call, King said that she appreciated Garand’s “tough love” and that they kept in touch, even after King stopped taking her classes. Garand told me that King “represents the best in an Amherst College student: She is insightful, inquisitive, and dedicated in all she undertakes.” Garand praised King’s dedication to her work and told me that her successes in “Printmaking I: The Handprinted Image” and “Working in Series: The Interdisciplinary Connection Between Drawing and the Handprinted Image” are the result of many re-evaluations, re-examinations, and continuous efforts to improve her work. Garand recounted how “[King] created one of the best student drypoint self-portraits I have seen: depicting herself screaming, a facial expression demonstrative of her inner feelings as a teen about to turn 20 years old. It is a print that is both sardonic and poignant, capturing the angst and excitement of entering a new decade and chapter of life while shedding her ‘teenager’ self.”

One of the most memorable things from working with Garand, King told me, was the memory of a sign on the studio wall that reads, “Inspiration is for amateurs. Printmakers get to work.” Though simple, the words shaped King’s work ethic, encouraging her to “dive straight into work in the studio,” try things without overthinking, and keep herself busy. King said this was a significant lesson she wished to share with other Amherst students. 

“Don't stay in your lane,” King said. “Challenge yourself to do something you don't even think you're capable of because you are, and you're going to impress yourself with knowing you can do something you didn't think you could. It is so valuable to get out of your comfort zone that way.” 

Imaginary Little Worlds 

Despite being the current director of Gad’s, King told me that she didn’t actually get to join the improv group on her first try. She had auditioned for a spot as a freshman but didn’t make it until she tried a second time in her sophomore year, motivated by a desire to keep pushing her limits. Now, King said she values the Gad’s community much more than the work that they do on stage. “I could go into how it is a great practice of communication and teamwork,” she told me, “but at the end of the day I just love that we can get together as a community and … have fun with each other.” When the academic world gets too hectic, King said that getting together with her friends to create “these lovely, imaginary worlds” keeps her going. 

“Gad’s goes beyond the stage. We keep in contact with each other even after graduating, and that is something that gives me great comfort,” she said.

Outside of Gad’s, King likes to create mixed media art from materials she has lying around her room — embroidery, bead art, curated collections from flea markets, everything is an outlet for creativity. When she wasn’t making art, reading a good book, or having picnics with friends, King told me that she has worked jobs around the school as a Managing Graphics Editor for The Student, performing at “Voices,” helping out at commencement ceremonies, custodial work, and even working for the Alumni House. To her, nothing was “too crazy,” or too much to not try it out.

We Owe Each Other Everything 

“We Owe Each Other Everything: Designing a COVID-19 Memorial For The Current Commemorative Landscape” is the title of King’s ARCH thesis. This research and creative project, she explains, is where her two-fold relationship to the global crisis begins. King’s work began with a simple question: What does it mean to make a memorial and claim a space where everyone will walk by and see? “The memorials we know in America,” she explains, “tend to be patriotic, didactic, and nationalistic. But how can we memorialize something like Covid, a tragic event that took place across national lines and affected pretty much the whole world?” 

Besides the 7.2 million lives taken by the viral infection, King wanted to think of ways of remembering those who stood firm and had their lives changed during the pandemic: healthcare workers, front-line emergency responders, scientists, students, and even teachers. Her answer to these challenges was an exploration of “counter-monuments,” memorials that prioritize collective memories, or what she describes as “a project in a conversation with a community and bringing in a lot of different people's ideas and concerns  — a community experience, rather than just one architect or designer sitting behind the dating table.”

While drafting it and deciding on the dynamics of the memorial were far from easy decisions to make, King ultimately submitted a design for a moving installation that would remain for two-and-a-half months in major cities affected by the pandemic, displaying all 7.2 million names of those who passed from the disease. The 14 seven-foot tall screens that make up the installation show each person's name 14 times for 30 seconds, but before moving to the next city, it leaves a few pieces of itself — the names of those from the region — behind to honor those from the area. 

“Owing each other everything,” King explained, “is a lesson I learned during the pandemic, but it also goes beyond that.” King owes her devotion to art as a major and a career to her peers and professors in the ARHA department, just as much as we all owe our own accomplishments to those who keep us going along the way. “We don't exist in isolation from one another. On the contrary, we rely on each other for everything, and this dependence is something we should be proud of and never forget.”

Getting to Work and Looking Ahead

For now, King’s immediate plans include traveling for the summer and subsequently moving to New York City. “Ultimately, I want to be doing something in the realm of art and architecture. Whether that means working for a particular artist, an art gallery, a museum, an archive, or a non-profit I cannot tell … I just know that I have to get my foot in the door, and do what I have to do.” In the end, there is no denying that King lives up to the quote that inspired so much of her college career: “Inspiration Is For Amateurs. Printmakers Get To Work.”