Katie Kaplan
Through a multidisciplinary visual art practice, my work explores the natural world as a connective medium between mystic experience and activist practices. These works consider environmental destruction and seek remediation through spiritual and cultural transformation. My process roots in printmaking and expands into textiles and sculpture, as each piece draws from various sources of research: ancient cults of psychedelic witches, experiential field mycology, queer ecology, the compost pile.
Utilizing screenprinting to create repeat patterns, I engage with decorative vernacular in a fluorescent, psychedelic palette. When I look at the more-than-human world, I see adornment not as frivolous or as demarcation of gender, but rather as a source of power, communication, and survival. Vibrant quilts display material indulgence and gratuitous color and pattern, leaning into abundance. This visual quality is an expression of my identity and sexuality, where language falls short; queerness and biophilia manifest as textures, colors, and symbols—as ecstatic joy and holy vibration. The quilting process is kin to compost: printed and dyed fabrics are reabsorbed into a new whole, each quilt made from the scraps from the last. The quilt becomes a metaphor for holobiosis and exists as a kaleidoscopic object of reconstituted visions, using the language of abstraction to represent the ineffable qualities of spirit. My artistic process initiates multiple levels of re-interpretation, a constant switching and reforming, like a mirror to the natural cycles of death and regeneration.