pencilears

So, from being a place where I put all of my art during high-school to being my current professional art-portfolio website, deviantART and I have gone through quite a bit together.

In light of this recent development, I thought I'd make my journal into more of an informal artist statement. so, here goes.

I'm Katherine Powell, I am currently a BFA with a concentration in mixed media and printmaking at the University of Western Washington.

the current series I am working on, Deer Girl, is a semi-narrative exploration into illustration and the boundary between the story of the life of the artist and the story that artist is telling.  Each piece is inspired by emotionally charged moments in my life that I want to think about and make art about with out it being immediately comprehensible as to what exactly I'm saying or who it's about.

if you dig into this website you will find comics from when I was in highschool that serve a similar purpose in a similar way. Back then I would take a moment, an observation, or a joke, from my day, jot it down onto a notecard and then draw myself and my friends as fantastic creatures and animal-people acting out these little narratives. The notecard-comics would have text, but as my handwriting is nigh incomprehensible I would have to read them aloud and perform them for anybody other than myself to know what exactly I was saying.

It seems old habits are hard to change.

Now that I'm in college I have done my best to distance myself from my artistic beginnings but the wellspring of my inspiration still flows from that same spot of wanting to find my people and my place in the world. Wanting to remember the weird and the good moments, while obsessing and thinking over how the bad bits went wrong.

And now that I've taken to doing more hand coloring I've returned to creating solid black linework through one method and blended color through a second. so, my art is beginning to resemble a spiral, I go the same way over and over again but with a wider range, greater perspective and ever broadening skill.

in light of the fact that I have decided to stop artistically and creatively stagnating in a fetid pool of the stuff I started drawing when I was in junior high and never before felt like there was a compelling reason to stop, I have decided to overhaul my deviations.

all the old stuff is still there, like useless sentimental knickknacks hastily thrown in the closet when company comes over, I have decided to keep it around but less publicly, for now.

eventually there may be a further housecleaning, much like the pile of physical drawings that bit the fire last summer. not yet though.

anyway: new years resolution, now that I have finally found one worth following is: No More Crutches.


time to shed the waterwings and swim in the deep end.

Art journal time.

things I have been working on:
not hating western, the ceramics department is a hazard and I am not even joking, I really liked my potterey classes at green river and it looks like if I want to learn how to make potterey green river is where I will have to do it.

Keppelman has been a good teacher, art one-twenty is ok. even if people who already know how to paint are grumbling about having to paint a color wheel for part of our next project, I'm ok with that, I dunno how to paint, I haven't done it since I was little, so starting out with the basics is fine by me.

the other part of the project is painting a 6"x6" iPhone app button and I am so not joking this is the actual project. my hand to goddess it is.

so far my ideas,
a lamp, app grants you three wishes
a monkey's paw, app grants you five wishes all of which will kill people you love
what's that fish? it would be a fish. (I bet this one already exists)

also:
my fish illustration is going in the spring art-student show. (yaay)

anyway, time to go talk to two different kinds of counseling, possibly even three,  to see if I can't sort myself out before next quarter.

Because I just got accepted into Western Washington University's art department.
I am majoring in Studio Art, later I'll see if I can't wrangle an Anthropology Minor. I think I have the credits for it.

I am really quite excited.