Art Collective
I thought I’d share my public speaking accomplishments at my sister’s wedding. Below are links to a poem mash-up I chose to read and my toast to the bride and groom. Video credit to Terryl Rock. Thanks!
I’m getting back into poetry. I am gearing up mentally for an upcoming show for my residency at SAFEhouse for the Arts. I’m nervous because it’s my first solo stage work. I have the skeleton of the show down, but I have a narrative that I’m planning on writing and it might be good or trite/heavy-handed. I’ve been drawing inspiration from a multitude of places, podcasts, art gallery visits, friends new and old, and where I’m living.
This has been a big month of travel and change. I have a place lined up for September first in SF! My first SF place. I’m excited to be based in the city. It’s a privilege and a sacred space of learning and growing.
I’ve been painting a lot. I discovered that I could use paper, so a good portion of this gallery is stuff on paper, cheap and portable substrate. I am enjoying the exploration of this technique. A lot of good feedback, definitely reminding the viewer of Van Gogh. Post-impressionism has very few well known heroes. I love Van Gogh. I think it was the first print I ever bought with my own money (Starry Night). And I love that he painted it 100 years before I was born. (Me: May 1989, Starry Night: June 1889). I’m very drawn to swirly skies, God’s expressive abstract.
I’ve been naming the paintings using an Abstract Title Generator, but I don’t pick the first one. My work lately has been happy and serene and there’s some dark stuff on there. (The Abstract Art Titlegenerator)
I want to get around to naming the different patterns in the paintings and create a card system to generate new designs. Rainbow coloring is so attractive to me, but what other color palettes should I be exploring? The feathery texture of going against the grain, the threadly pattern of following the stitches… Flowers, stars and oil slicks seem to lend themselves well to the sprinkly underpattern, but what else can be seen? Someone said that there’s a face in “Manoa at Night”. Maybe you can find it?
July has been a month of travelling and shifting for me. August will be a weird one too. Going to Seattle and Wisconsin for my sister’s wedding festivities.
I got a new job working at a chocolate factory thanks to a fellow auditioner for the sf neofuturists. Right on time, too. My deadline for moving out of Redwood City came upon me. I stayed in Oakland for a week with Cassidy and then when I needed it, I met a woman at her domicile and now we’re living together in Oakland. We nicknamed the domicile/studio Satchmo. She’s a creative person, too.
Satchmo is magical, from the rainbow-star room (discoball and crystals reflect sunlight in the afternoon) to the sound room (a padded room just for recording audio!).
I also signed up for a residency program at SAFEhouse for the Arts in San Francisco. I have a show coming up in exactly 2 months! I’m nervous but excited. It’s something ASMR-based.
Some vids I’ve collected from the internet today.
http://hiutdenim.co.uk/blogs/11am/ryan-carson-begin-with-the-end-in-mind
Artist Statement
Katarina Countiss (Honolulu, United States) makes paintings and drawings. By exploring the concept of landscape in a nostalgic way, Countiss creates intense personal moments masterfully created by means of rules and omissions, acceptance and refusal, luring the viewer round and round in circles.
Her paintings establish a link between the landscape’s reality and that imagined by its conceiver. These works focus on concrete questions that determine our existence. By applying a poetic and often metaphorical language, she investigates the dynamics of landscape, including the manipulation of its effects and the limits of spectacle based on our assumptions of what landscape means to us. Rather than presenting a factual reality, an illusion is fabricated to conjure the realms of our imagination.
Her works appear as dreamlike images in which fiction and reality meet, well-known tropes merge, meanings shift, past and present fuse. Time and memory always play a key role. By applying abstraction, she wants to amplify the astonishment of the spectator by creating compositions or settings that generate tranquil poetic images that leave traces and balances on the edge of recognition and alienation.
Her works doesn’t reference recognisable form. The results are deconstructed to the extent that meaning is shifted and possible interpretation becomes multifaceted. Katarina Countiss currently lives and works in San Francisco.~
13 Little-Known Punctuation Marks We Should Be Using | Mental Floss
500 Letters – Generate your artist biography
Idealism and Concept
marker on paper, 2016
$80
Katarina Countiss
katarinacountiss@gmail.com
katarinacountiss.com
instagram: @katcountiss
Sentiment and Logic
marker on paper, 2016
$90
Luminous Emotion
marker on paper, 2016
$30
Rainbow Avalanche
marker on paper, 2016
$30
Hand-boiled Wonderland
marker on paper, 2016
$30
Day at the Beach
marker on paper, 2016
$30
Turquoise Oddessy
marker on paper, 2016
$30
The Center of Conversation
marker on paper, 2016
$30
Overwhelming Sky
marker on paper, 2016
$30
Study for Lost Sky
marker on paper, 2016
$30
A Vigil in June
marker on paper, 2016
$300
Enchanting Valley
acrylic paint on paper, 2016
$500
I’m enjoying working bigger than postcard size. I like the movement in these works. It feels like there’s a world alive with emotion. I’m looking forward to making more leaf-like shapes with the sprinkles. That seems really successful in “Sentiment and Logic,” that and the black shapes create a nice sense of depth.
Materials
Wham-O Wham O Magic Pens Amazing Color Changing Pens
Milan Bicolor Marker Set – Conic Tip – FLAX art & design
Canson XL Pads – BLICK art materials
Kismet Arts Tangent 