Kathryn Knudsen — Collaborating with Excess

Kathryn is a Mother of 3 amazing young girls. She works and lives at the base of the mountains in Provo, Utah. She attended Utah State University in Logan, Utah, where she received her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. She also earned a Master of Fine Arts degree from Brigham Young University, where she taught in the Studio Arts program. She enjoys exploring and experimenting with all sorts of materials and is especially interested in the use of art to examine and bring notice to human’s impact on the environment.

My work utilizes a variety of traditional media, abstract forms, and found objects to produce an artistic vision with the intent to heal, refashion, and beautify. The result — an unpredictable labyrinth of old recycled clothing, unwanted paintings, neglected thread, discarded paper, necklace beads, and other recycled materials. Picking up objects that might otherwise languish in scrap heaps, second-hand clothing stores, or boxes of discarded memories, my aim is to integrate the power of transformed media with therapeutic promise of beauty and artistic experience. In these works the possibility of refashioning the world of discarded consumption becomes an artistic reality, something more than an aspiration, a wholly new experience in itself. The work realizes that the very fabric of our culture and everyday lives ca be recast and reclaimed, just as nature does in its endless march of life and desire. The oddness of the shapes, the opalescence of the textures, the quirkiness of the colors — all a deliberate collaboration with the materials which at first seem unimportant or used up, only to become something new and contemplative.

kathrynknudsen.com

Instagram: @kathrynwknudsen