Now in its third year, The Medium in Springdale's Creative Exchange Fund supports local artists by providing financial support and a space to take creative risks. KUAF is partnering with The Medium to profile some of this year's 37 multidisciplinary artists. We're going to hear about their art, their process and what it means to be a creative person in Northwest Arkansas right now.
Elsa Carenbauer is a multimedia artist and graphic designer based in Fayetteville. Her current exhibit at The Medium in Springdale includes immersive mixed-media installations that explore ideas of memory, identity and connection. Elsa is originally from Little Rock, and so is her brother, Wai Kay Carenbauer. Wai Kay happens to be KUAF's technical director.
The siblings recently joined Ozarks at Large's Sophia Nourani in the Firmin-Garner Performance Studio to discuss Elsa's work and its connection to family. Elsa says her interest in art started when she was very young.
Elsa Carenbauer: It's something that has always been in my life. Both of our parents are artists. My mom is a self-taught visual artist, and our dad was a music professor at UALR, and some of my earliest artistic memories are going into the university while we were in between, like, while my dad would be in between classes, and we would just get to hang out and go bang on the drums in the...
Wai Kay Carenbauer: That was fun.
Elsa Carenbauer: Or just take all these free art classes. And so I think personally, visual arts was always something I was more drawn to.
Nourani: And what medium did you start with, and maybe kind of going into that, you mentioned that you grew up in Little Rock. Maybe describe your career, how you first began sort of getting into drawing? Was it with pencil, or what did that look like for you?
Elsa Carenbauer: Early art was probably mostly drawings. I know that a few years ago we were going through some old diaries in the house, and so there always some doodles in the, like, guidelines of the paper. And so probably just pen and pencil for the beginning of it. I never really got too into painting. And then, yeah, I don't really recall having a specific medium pretty much ever.
And so that's kind of translated to everything throughout the years, but I would say relative to this project and others that I've worked on in the past, it's kind of funny because I went to Parkview Arts and Science Magnet, and to get in, they were out of the art major for that year. So I had to go in through the theater program.
And I was very quiet, very shy kid. So theater and acting was not where I wanted to be. And luckily I had a teacher who recognized that, and she was like, "Why don't you come and help me out with stagecraft?"
And so never would have placed myself there otherwise. But she was like, "Here's how to use some tools. Here's how to paint some big rocks so you can see them from a distance." And funnily enough, that's been one of the experiences that's really prepped me for this kind of installation work. For all of my life.
Nourani: Taking your work off of the page in that way.
Elsa Carenbauer: For some reason, have always known that's something that I was going to pursue and never really had another option in my mind of trying to do something else.
Nourani: Yeah, I love that. No, I think that's a great answer. Yeah. Wai Kay, could you see that growing up?
Wai Kay Carenbauer: Yeah, I think so. You did a lot of... I still remember, I guess for a while the style was very almost like anime, like, looking. I used to try to draw comics and things, and I was really bad at drawing and sort of better at sort of music. And I think Elsa definitely took more from our mom's side as far as where it came from for visual art and stuff like that, because I was really bad at that kind of stuff.
Nourani: Did you ever draw or do art with your mom? Is that something that you do?
Elsa Carenbauer: I do remember those comics.
Wai Kay Carenbauer: Those comics were good. Yes, I remember probably also reading them when you didn't know that I was reading them. But there was nothing that interesting in them. No.
Wai Kay Carenbauer: It's true.
Elsa Carenbauer: But no, my mom was self-taught, so I don't think she really got into it until we were older. So probably when I was in junior high, high school, she started doing visual art.
And so a big part of what was exciting to me about this project at The Medium is that you have a collaborator. And so that collaborator was my mother, along with other people as well, but she was the main one that, when I pitched the project, was to get a chance to really dive into the matriarch of the family and the lineage, especially with the women in our family, and kind of see where that goes and get her to sit down and get some insight.
Nourani: You have photograph, you have so many different multimedia elements involved in that. Want to get to those themes and that work and its connection to family.
Elsa Carenbauer: It is, I say, a partial building wrap because it takes up one of their exterior walls and then also the entryway to The Medium. And more or less, it's a big shrine or altar, and it's got family portraits that you can see. And those have all been collected from people in the community with ties to Northwest Arkansas. And then there is a shrine element, or like a community altar, where people can leave things behind.
And so in my eyes, that's a way of being able to actively participate in the culture that you want to move forward with in your life, because family histories are complicated. I'm like, not everybody is proud of their family. Not everybody has access to family records. If you're adopted, you may not know. There's a lot of reasons why it gets really complicated. So I wanted to use that foundation as a way to begin the story and to get people's attention, and then also have a piece that is more about claiming your culture and your identity.
The theme of it and having it be interactive and having that moment where people can choose a story for themselves is really based in us being biracial. And so our mom is Chinese and our dad is Caucasian, and having to sort of split or choose which direction you want to go any given day. Or maybe people don't accept you in a very clear way. They don't really understand what it's like to have a mixed background.
And so getting the chance to open that up for people to see every person as a complex individual, there's not really one way to define them. So getting the community participation was really important because I think it helps people invest in the story, but also be open to understanding that everybody else sort of had the same process coming to this place. And so I think that makes them a little bit more interested in, like, who's this other person's portrait that's next to mine? Or, like, whose other item on the shrine is this? And what does that mean? What does that symbolize for them?
Nourani: Where can people beyond the exhibit find your work and connect with you?
Elsa Carenbauer: There's always social media. And I'm on Instagram at No Bones Left. That's my business name. Something our mom said at some point.
Nourani: Yeah. What's the significance of that?
Wai Kay Carenbauer: She was talking about? What was she talking about when she said, "If they find you, you'll have no bones left," or something like that?
Elsa Carenbauer: Yeah. I think we were driving through a rough neighborhood. That's what it was. She was like, "You don't want to break down here, because if you do, you'll have no bones left." We're like, "What does that mean?"
Nourani: I like that. That's cool.
Elsa Carenbauer: So we have a lot of, I know we have a lot of fun sayings that I write down, and I'm like, "Oh, this would be a great website name or a band name."
Wai Kay Carenbauer: Yeah, I think they probably make more sense. Maybe they're lost in translation a little bit. In her mind, she's like, "Oh, this totally makes sense in Chinese. This is the direct translation." But when I say it out loud, everybody's like, "Huh?"
Nourani: So yeah, it sounds deep. I like it.
Elsa Carenbauer: I know, it's very funny. I'm like, it has... It's been a name that I've grown into over the years. I think it works really well for my business ideology. But yeah, you can find me online. I've got a website also, nobonesleft.com. I'm a member at Fenix, so I show there sometimes, depending on the show theme. I will have a sculpture in the upcoming Our Region, Our Time show at the Walton Arts Center. The main ways. Yeah, email me, DM me on Instagram. I'm always looking for collaborations and just getting to know people.
Ozarks at Large's Sophia Nourani speaking with multimedia artist and Creative Exchange Fund recipient Elsa Carenbauer. They were joined by Elsa's brother and KUAF technical director Wai Kay Carenbauer. Elsa's exhibit at The Medium in Springdale will be available for the public to view through this weekend.
The Creative Exchange series is produced by KUAF Public Radio in partnership with The Medium. Support for this project comes from the Tyson Family Foundation. The Medium and the Creative Exchange Fund are projects of the Creative Arkansas Community Hub & Exchange, also known as CACHE. For more about this project and the 2025-2026 recipients, you can visit The Medium.
Ozarks at Large transcripts are created on a rush deadline and edited for length and clarity. Copy editors utilize AI tools to review work. KUAF does not publish content created by AI. Please reach out to kuafinfo@uark.edu to report an issue. The audio version is the authoritative record of KUAF programming.
