Kat Ryals

Originally from Little Rock, Arkansas, Kat Ryals is a southerner who received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Photography from Savannah College of Art and Design in Georgia. In 2015, she completed a Masters of Fine Arts degree at Brooklyn College, followed by a certificate in Museum Education in 2016. Ryals has shown her work nationally, and was included in recent group exhibitions with the Ortega Y Gasset Projects, Trestle Art Space, Holocenter, Temporary Storage Gallery at Brooklyn Fireproof, and the Wassaic Project. She has also completed several artist residencies, including the Vermont Studio Center Fellowship in January 2018, the Wassaic Project in January 2019, and she will be an upcoming resident at ChaNorth in August 2019. She is the cofounder of the curatorial project and art space, Paradice Palase, based out of Bushwick, Brooklyn. In recent years, she has been pursuing an interdisciplinary approach to her artistic practice where she creates lens based and digital works, 3D objects, wearables, and installations.

Statement
My work examines the enchantment of ornamentation & special effects and seeks to understand the relationship between power and illusion. How does this relationship function on an individual level as well as in large encompassing systems such as capitalism and organized religion? Through dichotomies of natural and artificial, sacred and profane, and luxury and kitsch, I am exploring systems of power in the spiritual and the temporal.  The imagery depicted in my lenticular prints begin physically as sculptures and sets that I build then photograph and digitally process. The prints dazzle the viewer with their high contrast and disorienting effects, while also bringing imagined objects and scenes to life with their 3D and animation qualities. Through wearable pieces, sculptures or "artifacts", and installations, I have also been developing a speculative past, future, or possibly alien society. As the work progresses, I will soon be depicting sacred scenes and rituals within this faux culture. The project is fused with historical and contemporary stylistic references – with Catholic, Sci-fi, Baroque, and Victorian influences blended with glittery, pop culture kitsch and neo-shamanism.

Interview with Kat Ryals

Questions by Andreana Donahue

Hi Kat. In what ways has your experience growing up in a Cajun Catholic family in Arkansas informed the ideas present throughout your work?
Oh, boy. It’s informed a lot! And it was something I honestly didn’t realize until more recently. My family is from south Louisiana, but I was born and raised in Arkansas. I was visiting family in Louisiana for Easter a few years ago and I was showing my cousin the work I was making at Brooklyn College, and she just goes “Oh, those just look like Mardi Gras costumes”. And I was shocked, and immediately thought “oh, nooooo”. Like that somehow lowered or took away the value of what I was doing. That question of “how is this art?” was also being implied. But sometimes you think you’re doing something totally unique and start to figure out what’s been influencing you later on. So, I’ve since really embraced the influences of my upbringing and I’m also happy with considering my work within the context of a gallery or as a costume parading down the street during Mardi Gras. I think my wearables can totally oscillate between those two situations without devaluing my artistry. I’ve started to do more research on costumes relating to local traditions from where my family is from as well, such as the Courir de Mardi Gras.

I had a bit of a rebellion against my Catholic upbringing, however – I was forced to go to church until I was 18 years old, then I was allowed a choice, and I haven’t participated in a mass since. I remember the first paper I wrote when I got to college was for a bullshit art school English class, and I wrote a paper that negatively reflected on the Catholic church and argued that it is a cult more so than religion and he wrote something like “Excellent!” and gave me 98 on the paper. I just grew really resentful because I didn’t ideologically agree with what the church was force feeding us when I got to high school. I also had a moral problem with believing in an institution that was built upon greed, power, patriarchy, and violence. My all girls catholic high school experience vaguely resembled some dystopian sci-fi novel where we all had to look exactly the same and free thinking was frowned upon and self-expression/creativity would be punished. But my disdain has turned into a distanced fascination or curiosity. I’m interested in studying the manipulative aspects about the church - the decor, the architecture, the idols, the relics - and how this pageantry is a visual language for power.

My upbringing also included a lot of time spent on my grandparent’s farm in Louisiana, running through the swamp in mud boots wielding a hatchet. As a teenager I spent a lot of time browsing junk, thrift and antique stores. My Aunt was a high school teacher in Louisiana and she did these educational tour trips through her school every summer. Once I got into high school, I was able to go on the trips too. So I was able to experience museums, churches, architecture, etc of Europe at a young age. I think the marriage between browsing through thrift store tchotchkes and visiting Baroque sites as a teenager really influenced my passion for material culture and my interest in anthropology. My parents also took us hiking as a regular activity from an early age, so I think the combination of rural experiences and spending lots of time outside has also impacted my interests and choice of materials.

How did you transition from your initial interest in fashion photography to a less commercial career as a visual artist?
Well before photographer, my first three dream occupations were: Las Vegas showgirl (age 4), open a souvenir shop in Gulf Shores, Alabama, but first study at the Sorbonne University in Paris (age 8 - there is a booklet I made in 2nd grade that illustrates this life path, I was super weird), then Archeologist (age 10). I had always been an “artist”. I was that kid growing up. Obsessed with painting, drawing, etc. But it never occurred to me while I was young that I could have a career as an artist. At the end of high school I picked up an interest in fashion and photography (my friends and I used to hang out at Barnes and Noble and flip through all the fashion mags – we didn’t have IG back then!). My parents got me a digital camera and I started staging shoots with my friends and it led to me heading off to school to study photography. Towards the end of school, I took a commercial photography business class and just had an epiphany about the world I was about to enter if I chose that path. I realized that I would spend years assisting other photographers, and even if I became a fashion photographer, it was mostly just doing the camera work and lighting. My passion was the creative side. And one of my professors said “Well, you picked the wrong major for that. You need to be a Creative Director then if that’s what you want to do.” As a 21 year old, I just thought “Well, shit”. The creative part, it turned out, was the most important thing for me. Doing portraits and other types of commercial photography full time wasn’t gonna cut it for me. I loved my analog, alternative processes, and my history of photography courses, and started to find that my heroes were contemporary art photographers, no longer fashion photographers. I also started to excel in creating fine art projects and portfolios, and was invited as one of (twelve?) students out of eighty-something to participate in a senior thesis show. I was beginning to be encouraged by my professors to pursue an MFA. So, yeah, I decided on fine art to have full creative control of my work and realized that it has been and will always be where my passion truly lies.

I didn’t know what I was going to do. I figured I’d probably end up teaching college, like a lot of artists end up doing to support their artistic practice. It’s been a journey, but I’m still here pushing forward. I also thought I could pursue a fine arts practice, and at some point do collaborations with commercial or corporate partners, like being invited to creative direct, or do photography, or styling, etc etc. And I’m optimistic that still could happen at some point. And I think that was what ultimately drove my decision – that I could do both, but it was more important to focus on independent art projects.

After finishing your undergrad in Savannah, you lived in Nashville for three years, then moved to Brooklyn seven years ago. How has working in these various communities shaped your creative practice?
Savannah was an incredibly inspiring and wonderful place to live during college. It was beautiful, with old, historic architecture and Spanish moss lined trees. It had that familiar southern charm yet tinged with strangeness. It shares the same mystical, mysterious, sometimes dark, energy that New Orleans has. It was also amazing to be in a place with so many other young artists like myself, having been 1 of (6?) students to fully complete the art program at my high school. I only knew a handful of other kids that were budding artists growing up. So besides maybe partying a bit too much I really thrived there while in school. I did an internship in Nashville while I was in college, so I decided to move there after school because I wasn’t ready to move to NY just yet. But I also didn’t want to go back to Little Rock. When I was living in Nashville for my internship, it seemed like a fun, weird creative southern city and I thought it would be a good next step. However, once I moved there I could not for the life of me find a job in the arts. The few galleries only had 1-2 employees, the museums never had openings for admin positions, didn’t take interns unless it was for college credit, etc. I was getting passed over for either having too little (or too much!) experience with photographers and graphic designers. There’s like 4 art schools there, and they always had openings, but I couldn’t teach because I didn’t have an MFA, and none of the schools there had MFA programs (which may have since changed) so I couldn’t go right into grad school to remedy that issue. I ended up working in an IT Department for a car dealership conglomerate across Tennessee. Then in an IT Department for an insurance company. Then just back to restaurants (which was my only experience before graduating college). Apparently, it’s easier to get a tech job with no experience than it is an art job with an arts degree. Who knew! Anyway, there were things I loved and miss about Nashville, but most of that has rapidly disappeared. I certainly miss my friends, but my favorite dives and cultural institutions have closed, and the developers have taken over the city. I had a hard time finding an artistic community there because literally everyone I knew was a musician (who mostly only showed interest in me because they wanted free/cheap photography). So, I was feeling pretty lonely for an arts community again like I had in Savannah. I felt stifled. My last year there, I ended up taking a little over half a year off of work, and focused on a developing a portfolio for grad school and doing some freelance photo work. When I got to Brooklyn for school, it felt SOOO good to be saturated by the art world. I exploded. I went to museums and galleries all the time. I loved and cherished all my school courses. I was fascinated by my professors and wanted to milk them for all their knowledge and experience. I seriously was so naïve before I got to graduate school, I didn’t know any emerging artists. Hell, I didn’t know of hardly any mid-career or well known artists either! I started making physical work again and experimenting and moving in directions I had been wanting to go. The second year of school, I was a full-time student plus I planned my wedding, took extra classes that were free to take, and was our thesis coordinator. I learned that NY H U S T L E. And the momentum has not stopped. I was so so grateful to be here and be doing what I love with a huge community to be part of, I have not wanted to waste a single moment of it. I feel like in Nashville I could have done more to involve myself in the art community there, and I just didn’t. I think I gave up very easily there, or got in my own way. The NY art community has really shaped me by having that comradery with fellow emerging artists. My regular-job friends don’t understand the same issues we face, or even the excitements that we have! So it’s just really important to have peers for encouragement, help & support, and a sense of belonging. I think it’s really hard to push yourself to make work if you don’t have that. There’s also so many opportunities here with all the different folks, galleries and organizations, that’s also a big encouragement to keep making time for my own work.

Can you tell us about your workspace? What’s your favorite time of day in the studio?
My workspace is the basement level of my apartment. Since 2017, it was split to become PARADICE PALASE, my curatorial project with Lauren Hirshfield. It was getting really hard to make work between shows, because I tend to spread out all of my supplies, build installations, and have several projects going at once. We just recently leased our first commercial space over on Broadway in Bushwick, so now I have the space to myself again. And oh man, does it feel good to know I can just go down there and work on things and not have to put it all away in boxes and stack it up in a corner when I’m done! I will say, everyone is different, but I do find it difficult to work in my home. I’m married, and I have always had this tendency to prioritize literally everything before my artistic practice, whether its gallery or freelance work, my home/personal life, or like even the laundry or whatever. When I’m done with everything else, I usually just want to lay down and drool. When I used to have to trek an hour and a half to my studio at school, it was like once I was there, I was there. I could really focus because my work and home life were separate, and it was so far away from home that I would spend like 12 hours there every day. All that said, I’m starting to get through a busy period with the gallery and will be back in my own studio working more, especially over the summer when our studio member exhibitions start at the gallery. I literally get butterflies in my stomach when I think about having three months of extra free time to be in my studio. As I mentioned I tend to take care of housekeeping, literally and figuratively, before I get started in the studio. So when I was at school, or when I go to residencies, I usually get started in the late afternoon and go until 1am-2am. Night has always been my favorite time. Because there’s less interruptions and distractions. Almost anytime that I’ve been in a group studio, everyone else works during the daytime and I tend to be the only night person. So I get to be totally alone, and don’t worry about daytime distractions like emails, texts, other random responsibilities that come up, etc. At home, it’s a bit different. I’m trying to adjust to being as productive as possible during the day when I have a studio day scheduled, because my husband works during the day too, so it can be more distracting to try to get work done in the evening sometimes.

Your interdisciplinary body of work spans photography, installation, sculptural assemblage, and textiles. What is the relationship between these various approaches?
The connection definitely goes back to an obsession with material culture and interest in anthropology and how culture is packaged and delivered to us, whether It’s presented in everyday life or in a museum. We are a society and culture of objects, images, and rituals. I think of my work has sort of Sci-Fi aspect in that I am basically developing an alternative or imagined form of our reality, or more accurately, my own personal interpretation by way of a culture that I’ve invented.

Many photographers enjoy photography as a tool for documenting, but I’m more interested in it conceptually and historically. This is why I’ve tended to choose alternative photographic methods over just straight digital or film photography. I taught myself how to do dry plate tintypes, and that was my primary medium for years. I’m interested in objecthood, and that relationship to photography. I’ve become interested in this distinction of virtual vs actual, of slow analog processes blended with mass producible digital media.

In the past you’ve described your aesthetic as “Priscilla Queen of the Swamp.” By using a diverse range of materials - embroidery, hot glue, epoxy, wallpaper paste, silicone, latex, inkjet prints, and found materials such as beads, rhinestones, fake plants, textiles, and teeth -  you achieve a specific kind of ornamentation. Why are you attracted to these materials? Do you prefer collecting them by chance?
Where did you find that? LOL. I am low key a hoarder, but it just depends. Sometimes I hold onto things for years, and then at some point finally find a use for it as a material. Other times, I have an idea for a sculpture or project and actually search for materials. I purchase some materials, I’ve sourced a lot from Materials for the Arts while I was in school, and sometimes things are gifted to me by family and friends. My choice of materials stems from an interest in consumer or throw away culture, mass produced items vs. the carefully hand crafted, and the hierarchies and value systems of different consumer and personal items. I think of my “people” I’m creating as “consumer cannibals”. They are something like post-apocolyptic showgirls, like MadMax meets Priscilla Queen of the Desert. I’m interested in the special effects of ornamentation, and the idea that you can be in awe of such intensive embellishment, only to realize it is made from cheap materials or seemingly decaying parts. It’s that moment of wonder followed by horror. The silicone is shiny and glittery, yet visibly resembles open flesh. The carnivalesque is a huge influence on my work. It’s about celebration and indulgence as a rebellion against order, rules, and social expectations. Hierarchies are flipped or nullified. I’m interested in incorporating animal parts and natural objects into the work again as a defiance against hierarchy. There’s a wall painting that used to be in the former Holy Innocents’ Cemetery in Paris that was death leading a bishop, a blacksmith, a young boy, etc all down to the underworld and the writing underneath it said something like “in death, we are all the same”. My bodysuits and masks are all uniquely designed, yet when they are finished and all together they all start to the look the same. They start to have a homogenous look to them, or perhaps a globalization to them.

 I think my work accurately reflects how most of us experience the world (or at least those of us in North America). Where life has become a roller coaster of pleasure and the sublime (everything is about feeling good, whether it’s about making “healthy” choices or unhealthy choices, and we are lured in by only the most impressive things, like stalking people’s vacation photos or immersive installations like Instagram museums) balanced by feelings of dread and a general sense of horror of what’s going on socially, politically, and economically in the country, and also globally. My interest in special effects (which come in many forms – the architecture of a room, heavily embellished objects, optical illusions, digital effects) lies in that we are so heavily immersed in them yet are completely complicit with them. We know they are special effects, but no one really thinks about that when they are walking around a mall or Disney world or a casino. Or when they’re in St Peter’s Basilica. The reason I think this is important to be aware of, is because I think that’s how we are controlled by large, encompassing systems of power like capitalism and religion. That’s why I’m fascinated by organized religion – and its relationship to capitalism. In the past, churches were built as these overwhelming structures totally embellished top to bottom, in an effort to overwhelm you. It was to overpower you. Today casinos and theme parks function in a similar way, we know they’re built to indulge the senses and manipulate us, yet we engage with them anyway. I myself love to indulge in such things, and willingly play the game. I think about how the media, however, and particularly this White house, utilizes special effects. And how we have just learned to accept it.

Sewing or embellishing by hand is prevalent in your work. Can you talk more about your process and its slow, labor-intensive nature?
I’m really interested in that pocket of time in the Victorian era when we moved away from largely producing items by hand and moved into an industrialized, automated world. Things that are handmade are more susceptible to flaws. That interests me because I’m largely self taught when it comes to sewing and my work is filled with technical errors. It’s funny that I am a photographer too because I tend to think of photographers as very anal, and clean art producers but I never was. My darkroom prints always had fingerprints and dust all over them, and I embraced it and incorporated it into my personal aesthetic. I’ve taken several sewing classes over the years, but never practiced on the machine enough to really ever get good at it. I’ve gotten better at hand sewing, especially since I did an instructional embroidery residency a few years ago. It basically taught me patience and focus. Even with all the practice, my hand work is still not perfect. There’s often visible mistakes, and again I embrace this as part of my aesthetic in a world that demands perfection. Glass paper weights used to be produced by hand in Europe. Once a mechanical process was developed, the handmade weights became more sought after and collectible because of their flaws. Their uniqueness became what was valuable rather than the precision utilized in their creation. I also like my work to have a homemade feel to it, because of the different value we assign to homemade objects. Homemade objects largely only have personal value rather than money value. A handkerchief that your grandmother embroidered has a priceless personal value to it but it’s otherwise valueless to other people. Something people would not consider spending money on. The slow labor of my practice can be problematic, though, because it takes me so long to finish things and I see my peers churning out new work. It also causes your pricing to be higher, which means it’s less likely to sell. I’m glad that I am also able to create easily producible digital pieces as well in addition to the physical work. I am also starting to appreciate my slow process more, because I think there’s a tendency for emerging artists to feel pressured to produce new work all the time to stay relevant. We’re obsessed with newness. I’m starting to wonder about the sustainability of constantly producing.

Often you create handmade pieces that “eventually get translated into digital, mass reproducible media such as photography, video and 3D rendering.” Are you usually showing just the final translations or are the original objects sometimes installed alongside these works?
Either way. I sometimes just show either the digital or the physical or a combination of both. The objects in my work function much like we do in modern society – we have our physical selves and then we have our digital selves – our avatars. You’ll notice that the digital works are always much more glamorous than the physical works are in person.

You’re currently working on an ongoing series of bodysuits and masks, which will ultimately be worn by models for videos, as well as flip and 3D lenticular photographic prints. Are there specific artists or other sources of inspiration for these carefully crafted wearables, or this project in general?
I started this project in graduate school, which I think stemmed from a lot of the critical theory I was learning at the time. One of my professors once recommended I look at Saya Woolfalk and I have become a huge fangirl of her work. I also have a big crush on Nick Cave, of course. And I am also a big Mike Kelly fan, and was very moved by his retrospective at MoMA PS1 back in 2014. Something I also came across after beginning these wearables were the catacomb saints. Which again, back to upbringing, it’s just interesting I was making something that looks so influenced by something without even realizing it. The catacomb saints were skeletal bodies found in a mass grave in Rome. It was during the post reformation time when Catholicism was losing popularity. The church decided that these were early Christian martyrs with no evidence of such a claim, and shipped them off to various churches around Europe where their bones were embellished with gold thread and glass gems. I have a book on them by Paul Koudounaris and used his book as resource to do a research trip across Bavaria in 2018. The same trip I visited the catacombs in Paris and Versailles, and the Kutna Hora church in Czech Republic. One of my earlier influences is related to the catacomb saints, however. When I was on one of those high school trips to Europe, we visited the Capuchin monk catacombs in Rome, where the monk bones are ornately organized into patterns and designs. That experience was very inspirational to me. This project has slowly been brewing over 5-6 years. I’ve hated that I haven’t had much time since leaving school to develop it more, but I think the slow progress has ended up being a good thing. It’s giving me time to take a deep dive into research on the project, and to also have time for thoughtful reflection about the direction I want to take the work.

You mentioned that research is integral to your practice. Can you talk more about the information or imagery you’re seeking out?
Yeah of course. Some reading that has influenced me has been critical theory about the abject and the monsterous feminine (Julia Kristeva and Barbara Creed), the carnivalesque (Mikhail Bakhtin), and ornamentation (Alfred Gell and Adolf Loos). Two of my go to books for inspiration are “From the Vatican to Vegas: A History of Special Effects” by Norman Klein and also “The Artificial Kingdom: A Treasury of the Kitsch Experience” by Celeste Olalquiaga. I’m definitely influenced by Sci-if as a genre and I’m always looking at the Baroque and certain types of costuming and fashion for inspiration (Mardi Gras, Las Vegas showgirls, the Catholic and Camp fashion shows at the Met). I also love this series of short books on the history of different everyday objects. I’ve read the one on hoods, the souvenir, the remote control, and I just started the one about glass. They are from a series called “Object Lessons”. 

Many of your photos have a staged or cinematic quality. Are there any particular films that have been influential for you?
Oh yes! I’ve always been heavily influenced by films. Which is part of how I developed one of our gallery programs which pairs a local artist’s work with a film. The program is on pause for now, but it was called Artist Curated Cinema. Artists would give a 15 minute slide talk about their own work and then choose a film that has inspired them artistically to screen after. So it was really a film series but we found a way to incorporate artists sharing their work as part of it.

Starting in high school, I became a big fan of David Lynch. My dad gave me a copy of Eraserhead when I was like 15 or 16. I had to turn it off after 30 minutes lol. I couldn’t handle it. I also love John Waters. Some of my favorite films include “Barbarella”, “Bladerunner”, “Dune”, “The Cook, the Thief, his Wife, and her Lover”, “Desperate Living”, “Wild at Heart”, “Showgirls”, David Byrne’s “True Stories”, PeeWee Herman’s show and films. I really liked that mini series “Maniac” that came out in 2018. The list goes on - there’s so many other Sci-Fi and camp movies and series that influence my work.

You’re also a co-founder and director of Paradice Palase in Bushwick. Can you tell us about the mission and exhibition programming of this space?
I met Lauren Hirshfield my co-founder in fall of 2016. We really hit it off and had a lot of overlapping entrepreneurial ideas and thoughts about the art world. We were both tired of the limitations the art world presents, it always seemed like there were two options: wealthy exclusive blue-chip galleries or precarious & laborious non-profit models. We wanted to problem solve how we could create a space that was sustainable without being backed huge amounts of money from a single donor or investor or through constant grant writing. As an artist and previous student of museum education, audience & community engagement with visual art is also important to me, and I wanted to look for ways to increase general public interest in arts programming. We landed on community funded and supported as a model and through programs like Artist Curated Cinema have worked on creating arts programming that appeals to a broad audience. We started out launching crowdfund campaigns alongside every exhibition we did (2017-18) and would raise a couple thousand dollars each time to split with the participants for artists and the gallery. It was exhausting and we knew there had to be a better way to solicit community support, engage general audiences and pay our artists fairly. We realized that we could borrow from other industries such as retail to appeal to a more general customer base, and not just art collectors. That’s how we developed our newly launched Wearable Print program where we collaborate with artists to design and sell limited edition shirts. We also have a supporter program that anyone can join - it’s $5-$10 a month and we offer perks in exchange for supporting our work. I think many people are starting to utilize community funding more now as independent creators, and as alternative or DIY spaces. The idea is that instead of big chunks of money coming from one person, everyone chips in a little bit and becomes connected to the space. We previously did more programming (artist talks, film nights, panels, workshops) but are taking a break right now to focus on developing on shirt program. Our new gallery space is also backed by studios that we built, and so we have a more active creative space now as well. We’re hoping to develop an arts business model that can work not just for us, but for other artists and entrepreneurs as well.

Can you share your perspective on the importance of building community and supporting the work of other artists?
Oh I think it’s so important. I mentioned earlier that it’s tough pushing yourself to make art, especially when you aren’t making much or any money on it, and you’re spending the little free time you have on it. Having a community for encouragement and support is the only way for me to push myself to keep doing it. I know it can be tough to go out sometimes and make an effort. I’m sort of going through that period now - I’ve really been active the last few years and I’m starting to burn out a little bit. Outside of our programs with the gallery, I’m really trying to take a social break and concentrate more on my own personal work and just get some rest. We all need to do that sometimes in order to keep championing others and ourselves. However, if you take the time to support others, they will take the time to support you too. So much of what happens in the art world is from networking and going out and meeting people. I also love visiting other people’s studios and going out to see others’ work. I’m so grateful to be in a place where there is so much art to see. I loathe those artists that act like they aren’t interested in artwork that’s not theirs. I love art so much - it’s not just about me and my own creations.

Over the past few years you’ve spent time at several residencies, including Wassaic, Vermont Studio Center, and Arquetopia. Is there a residency experience that has particularly resonated with you or been the most beneficial to your development?
I think Arquetopia has had the biggest impact on my practice. Because my process is slow, I always end up leaving residencies feeling like I didn’t get much done but really I spend most of my time sewing stuff down that was already pinned onto my wearables. So visually it doesn’t look like I did much, although I did. I’ve also had to still do gallery work while away, so it wasn’t like I could just focus 100% of my time on my artwork. I’ve met some amazing artists and made new friends and professional connections, which I am super grateful for. I think right now I’m most interested in residencies that are more geared toward professional development (like learning a new skill) or less social and more process oriented. Arquetopia was an experienced based residency rather than production. I was there with three other artists, and luckily we all got along really well. It has proved so valuable to me even though I didn’t produce much while I was there - I just learned so much. They assigned us lengthy readings, which I enjoyed, and I would spent nights reading the assignments and making notes about my practice. I went to weekly classes learning embroidery with the incredible Estela Antonio, who is a local Zapotec artisan and fashion designer there. We went on field trips to museums, farms, historic sites, etc. And we were immersed in and educated about a culture different from our own.

What are some of the best exhibitions you’ve seen in recent memory?
Some of my favorites here in NYC have been museum shows and retrospectives such as Mike Kelly’s retrospective at MoMA PS 1, Jean Paul Gaultier at the Brooklyn Museum, the Catholic fashion show at the Met, last year’s exhibitions at Cooper Hewitt. I thought the Wassaic Project’s open call show last year was a really exciting group of artists and the show was very well curated. A few other local favorites from last year included Holocenter’s show at Plaxall Gallery “Space Light”, the Material Girls show at 550 Gallery “My Shell Makes Itself”, and the two person show at Selenas Mountain “Its More About Us” featuring Sanie Bokhari and Asif Hoque. 

I know you love the book series Object Lessons. Can you talk about a few of your favorite objects and their personal significance?
That’s a tough one because I have many objects that I love so much. My home is like a library of things - there’s just stuff everywhere. I have a collection of children’s Halloween masks from the 50s. My mom has figured out that I like masks and has gifted me some of my favorites over the years. They are terrifying yet they were meant for children. My mother-in-law is also the queen of finding the strangest objects and gifting them to me. One of the bests Christmas gifts she’s given me was a bear rug that she got from her friend’s “going out of business” sale at her booth in an antique mall in Arkansas. The story was that the woman actually shot the bear from her deer stand. There is a visible bullet hole in the rug. My dog became obsessed with this rug when she was a puppy and sleeps on top of it with her head on its head. And cuddles up to it. Their relationship is kind of twisted lol. Other beloved objects include other gifts from family such as antique tarot cards and fortune telling decks, vintage photographs, prints and posters (especially medical ones), Victorian mourning jewelry my husband has bought me. I’m realizing that my favorite possessions have all been gifts from people close to me.

What’s next for you? Do you have any upcoming projects, exhibitions, residencies, or other news to share
Coming up, I’ll be presenting a solo of my work at SPRING/BREAK art show NY, curated by the amazing Valery Jung Estabrook, who is an incredible artist herself. This is the first time I’ll have my work shown at the fair. Lauren and I curated a booth last year, and this year she’ll be curating a solo of Jen Dwyer’s work. Then we have our first Paradice Palase curated exhibition of the year at our space opening on March 14th, 6-9pm. The title is “Superimpose” and features the work of photographers Rob Gordon (Arkansas), KC Crow Maddux (Brooklyn), Paul Simon (NYC), and Francesca Simonite (Texas). I’m also in a show titled “Craft in Contemporary Art” at Site:Brooklyn, guest juried by Samantha De Tillio at MAD Museum. It opens on Friday March 20th, 6-9pm. Other than that, I haven’t really been applying to residencies this year because I have more time and space here now to make work. I’m looking forward to a productive year and hopefully more opportunities will stem from producing new things and wrapping up some older projects.

To find out more about Kat and her work, check out her website.