ARTIST STATEMENT - BIOGRAPHY - CURRICULUM VITAE
Artist Statement
for Finding My Scissors
Collage Series
With collage, all things are possible: a geisha performing a tea ceremony for a beloved dog, a sewing circle of women sitting atop a reclining zebra, a young woman levitating beneath a giant bee. In this surreal realm of juxtaposition and fantasy, new worlds are born. Thus the fragmented nature of the world, represented by the individual elements of the collage, ultimately sings of its togetherness--disjointed and different perhaps, but deeply connected nonetheless.
Katherine Minott, M.A., is an artist in love with the utter simplicity and potent possibility of analog collage (made with paper, scissors, glue--nothing digital). She finds inspiration from an array of resources–natural history illustrations from the 1800s, Gray’s Anatomy, a 100-year old Braille bible–and creates 2D dreamscapes. When Katherine spies a visually compelling image, she’ll slice it out, then continue the process until a collection of cut-outs has been assembled. To this end, she creates and arranges material in an ad hoc fashion, guided by shape, size, pattern, texture, and whim.
Her art takes aesthetic and conceptual cues (though not exclusively) from the Dada movement of the early-twentieth century. Dada employed chance, randomness, and collage techniques in order to create and champion absurdity as a valid aesthetic mode.
Katherine is intrigued by the re-use and manipulation of paper insofar as society increasingly moves toward a paperless culture beholden to digital forms. Maintaining a commitment to a paper-based medium functions as an archival endeavor just as much as an aesthetic one. Even if the materials aren’t headed to the landfill, the magazines and books she uses in her art have fallen out of commercial and economic favor. Excavating, for example, an ad from LIFE magazine circa late-1950s enables an image over 60 years old and left for dead to re-enter systems of capital and production flows. Hence, thrift shops, yard sales, and clutter-phobic friends provide endless discarded and/or damaged materials that Katherine breathes life into.
When not working in her studio, Katherine can be found exploring the craggy shoreline and quiet forests of Maine. She is a published writer, photographer, and a former college instructor.
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Biography
Before settling in Maine recently, Katherine Minott lived in Arizona and New Mexico for most of her adult life. Her aesthetic has been shaped by the region's wide open horizons, cumulus clouds, and the ancient rock-bones of Mother Earth. Katherine's connection to the natural world began in Harvard, MA, where apple orchards, swamps, and Shaker cemeteries provided an important backdrop to her New England childhood. Exploration and discovery help to temporarily satiate some of her feverish curiosity about Life.
Katherine earned a Master of Arts degree and, for over 18 years, instructed college students in the fine art of writing. Via alternative teaching delivery methods and opportunities, she taught a wide variety of student populations: incarcerated teens and adults, troops stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan, and an incoming class of state police recruits. Katherine also plied her craft as a freelance magazine writer, profiling one of the Discovery Channel's hit stars, Cody Lundin of Dual Survival.
Now a full-time visual artist, she spends many hours immersed in the forest and along the rugged coastline, camera in hand, often “cloud hidden, whereabouts unknown.” (Quote by Alan Watts)
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Curriculum Vitae
YouTube feature
The Art Tourist YouTube Channel - for Art Appreciation & History - January 25, 2022
Cut/paste the following URL (and cue to 13:50): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNZ41SrHrt4
Publications
Magpies Magazine - Artist Profile "Finding My Scissors" - January 2022 issue.
Kosmos Quarterly: Journal for Global Transformation - Photo Feature and Artist Profile - Spring 2020.
The Sun - Photo - May 2019, Issue 521. Readership: 70,000+ subscribers.
The Sun - Photo - Jun 2018, Issue 510.
The Sun - p. 46 - Apr 2016, Issue 484.
New Mexico Magazine 15th Annual Photo Contest Winner, Category: Details, Award: First Place - Feb 2016 issue. Entries from 222 photographers from 34 states as well as Afghanistan, Brazil, Ireland, Israel, and the UK. Readership: 70,000 subscribers.
Nimrod International Journal - Back Cover Photo - Fall/Winter 2016, Vol. 60, Number 1
The Sun – Cover Photo – Jul 2015, Issue 475. Readership: 70,000+subscribers.
Click on link here: https://www.thesunmagazine.org/issues/475
New England Review – Cover Photo – Vol. 35, 2014, Number 3
Cream City Review – Cover Photo – fall/winter 2014, Vol. 38, Number 2
New Mexico Magazine 14th Annual Photo Contest Winner, Category: Animals, Award: Honorable Mention – Feb 2015 issue
Camas: The Nature of the West, University of Montana, p. 12, Volume 22, Number 2 - Summer 2014
Counterexample Poetics: Assemblage of Experimental Artistry, Mar 2014 issue
Santa Fe Manual 2013/2014 Contributing Photographer, p.62
New Mexico Magazine 13th Annual Photo Contest Winner, Category: People, Award: Honorable Mention - Feb 2014 issue. Over 1600 photo entries received by magazine.
Streetlight Magazine, Artist Interview, October, 2014
Ink & Alchemy, Featured Artist, robinkalinich.com – Feb. 2015, Feb. 2014
Santa Fe Manual 2012/2013 Contributing Photographer, pp. 17, 192
Visual Language Contemporary Art Featured Artist - Apr 2013, Volume 2 No. 4, pp. 58-63
Turning Art (turningart.com) Featured Artist - Feb 2011
Patagonia Regional Times, Patagonia, AZ, Contributing Photographer - 2010-12
Fayetteville Observer “ New Exhibit at Cape Fear Studios is an Exercise in the Abstract” Fayetteville, NC - Sep 18, 2011
Products/Online Stores/Corporate Curators
Indiewalls Inc. - Vetted Artist - 335 Madison Ave, 16 FL., New York, NY www.indiewalls.com
Turning Art - Vetted Artist - Art Sourcing and Curating to 15,000 subscribers - 184 South Street, Boston, MA
We’Moon™ 2017 Date Book - Stardust - Mother Tongue Ink Publisher
Greeting Cards by Gratefulness eCard gratefulness.org
Music Compact Disc Artwork - When Someday is Now by Bob Hemenger, Genre: Jazz, Bob Hemenger Music LLC, 2016
Juried Artist for Powis Custom™ iPad/iPhone products, 2929 5th Street, Berkeley, CA, powiscustom.com
Collections
The Selby (Luxury Apartments), 695 Merrick, New York, NY - 2022 - 1 photograph for common library
Boston Children's Hospital, Hale Family Building, Boston, MA - 3 works on display - 2022
Hyatt Place Hotel, Jacksonville, FL - 3 photographs for corporate boardroom
Loews Regency Hotel, 540 Park Avenue, New York, NY - http://www.gallery.indiewalls.com/loews-regency
Teaching Experience
The Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, ME -- 2024-2025 Workshops: The Collage Artist as Storyteller; Celebrating Collage: Making Sophisticated Art with the Humblest of Materials; Jumping Off the Deep End: Diving into Creativity
Awards/Patronage
Art Week, hosted by Anina Fuller (niece of Fairfield Porter (painter) and Eliot Porter (photographer)) at the Porter family summer home on Great Spruce Head Island - scholarship recipient -- 2023
Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts - Margaret L. Gongaware Scholarship recipient, Gatlinburg, TN - 2019
Artist-in-Residence, fellowship recipient, Golden Apple, Harrington, ME - 2019
Image Journal - Glen Workshop scholarship recipient, Santa Fe, NM - 2019
Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, Deer Isle ME -- Mary Beasom Bishop and Francis Sumner Merritt Scholarship Recipient-- 2018. Vetted by instructor Warren Seelig, 2018 United States Artists fellow
Surface: Emerging Artists of New Mexico, Harwood Art Center, Albuquerque, NM – Scholarship Recipient – 2013
Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, Deer Isle, ME—Lois B. Rosenthal Scholarship Recipient —2012
Solo Show
Waterman's Community Center, North Haven, ME - Celebrating Collage - spring 2021
Selected Group Exhibitions
"10x10" Exhibition and Fundraiser, Port Clyde Art Gallery, Port Clyde, ME - Aug 2022
15th Annual New Mexico Magazine Photo Contest Winners' Exhibition, Tularosa Basin Gallery of Photography, Carrizozo, NM Jan-Sep 2016
2nd Annual Matanchen Bay Color Art Exhibit, Bahia Matanchen Cultural Center, Aticama, Nayarit, Mexico - Dec 2013-Jan 2014
"12x12" Exhibition and Fundraiser, Harwood Art Center, Albuquerque, NM - Dec 2013
“Surface: Emerging Artists of New Mexico” Harwood Art Center, Albuquerque, NM – Jun 2013
“Flower Power” 1650 Gallery, Los Angeles, CA - Dec 2012
“Abstract Art’s Passionate Freedom” Cape Fear Studios, Fayetteville, NC - Sep-Oct 2011
“Adventures in Art” Contents Interiors, Tucson, AZ - Apr 2011
Multiple Exhibitions
Creative Spirit Artists Gallery, Patagonia, AZ - 2012-13
Flux Gallery, Tucson, AZ - 2011–12
Education
Master of Arts, Prescott College, Prescott, AZ - 1995
The institution's motto: "For the Liberal Arts, the Environment, and Social Justice"
Bachelor of Arts, Prescott College, Prescott, AZ - 1993