Today we’d like to introduce you to Katie Beall.
Every artist has a unique story. Can you briefly walk us through yours?
Making art has always been the thing that challenges me the most. Of course, it has become the thing I can’t stop doing. As a very logical and inquisitive person, I have a desire to understand things and how they work. Really great art has an intangible quality to it and can never really be fully quantified or understood, much like life. That’s what drives me to keep making. It is something I know I won’t ever grasp entirely, but I don’t mind spending a lifetime trying.
Please tell us about your art.
My work is a combination of painting, installation, and sculpture. I often use paint as a medium, but I take it off of the surface so it can become an object that is capable of movement and life.
The core of my work is a very simple idea: existence. Not in the vague, overused sense of the word, but the actual time that we exist here on this planet and the fleeting, relative insignificance of it in the scope of all time. I think it’s a very human, maybe even biological, desire to try to create something that outlasts oneself and to strive for some kind of permanence. Art has often been a tool to fulfill that desire. Instead, I want to create pieces that can actually go through the same processes of deterioration that all life experiences. In setting up the work to be subject to the same forces that affect us, such as gravity and time, each piece helps me to understand one small facet of time and existence. My work is driven by the anxiety caused by the process of deterioration of mind and body, but also the simultaneous beauty of it; the realization that this very fragile, brief existence is the same experience shared by everything that has ever lived and everything that ever will. In this way, I hope my work can resonate with people as a universally recognizable and familiar experience.
Given everything that is going on in the world today, do you think the role of artists has changed? How do local, national or international events and issues affect your art?
I may have a differing opinion on this subject than many artists, but social and political issues are playing such an overwhelming role in the arts today that I actually hope to provide a respite from it. I believe that my role as an artist, now more than ever, is to create work that can shift the focus from each other’s differences to our greatest commonality of simply being human.
How or where can people see your work? How can people support your work?
I will have work in the upcoming exhibition Fresh Blood, at Mason Fine Art and an installation in ArtFields, an exhibition in Lake City, South Carolina.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.katiebeallart.com
- Email: kbeall16@gmail.com
- Instagram: @kbeallart
Image Credit:
Montez Brenard
Heidi Geldhauser
Getting in touch: VoyageATL is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.
