yc magazine... York County’s Entertainingly Informative Magazine
October 2020
Arts
The Cultural Scene By Chris Fox
Catching up with Katherine Kesey and Kindle. What draws me to poetry is the idea of absolute literary freedom but still needing specificity. I think of it as a challenge to be able to articulate precisely what I want people to hear, and yet, because of the nature of the medium, I can still be as nonsensical and allusionary as I want. This is also the case for visual art, but sometimes I imagine producing something in paint and other times I think in terms of words. August Birthday, in particular, was something I imagined in my head as quick and fragmented sentences, so that’s how it got produced.
What themes/ideas/images do you explore in your poetry?
Katherine Kesey in her studio.(All photos/Alexis Howard)
I
met Katherine Kesey a few years ago. Though I’ve known her primarily as a visual artist, she has just released a book of poems, so I thought I’d catch up with her to talk about her art and her new book.
Tell us about yourself and how you got into art:
I’ve been creating for as long as I can remember. I remember, as a kid, arguing with my brother about the correct way to draw a sunset. I’ve always felt it was natural for me to create and draw and be artistic, but what made me stick with it as a hobby and eventually turn it into a career is that at some point I realized not only did I like it, but I was also good at it. I drew a still life of dried flowers in the fourth grade and I looked at it and thought, “I did that?” That was the moment something clicked. Not only was drawing fun and satisfying for myself, but I suddenly realized it was possible to make other people understand what I made. Then I studied Graphic Communications at Clemson and graduated in 2018. I worked in graphic design for about a year until ultimately making the switch to being a full-time studio artist last Fall. Now, I work full-time in a studio in South End (at C3 Lab). My main goal right now is being
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an exhibiting artist and getting gallery representation.
How have you seen your work grow and develop over the years?
I’d say it’s really slow and mostly the same for long periods of time, and then something will happen, something will click, and everything is totally different all at once. Then the cycle starts over again. When I was in high school, I had an art professor named Ms. Mountain. One day, I looked at her and was just like, “Do I have to blend this pencil? Can I just leave this mark the way it is?” And she said, “Sure.” She told me I didn’t have to do anything. That was the first evolution for me - the idea that if the way I’m doing something isn’t exciting, I can do it differently. Most recently, I took a painting workshop with Alyssa Monks, and that blew my mind. Until then, I’d been making it up on how to paint, but she taught technique and craftsmanship in a way that revolutionized how my paintings develop and ultimately how they end up looking. You have a poetry book that just came out. As someone who has been primarily a visual artist, what drew you to poetry? I do! August Birthday — a book of 15 poems which I just released on Amazon
Like my visual work, I combine a lot of fragmented, iterative, or layered bits. I like the idea of strings tying things together allusions — so I end up subtly repeating myself a lot. August Birthday, despite being stand-alone poems, has these characters - “you and he and brother and me,” who appear in different places throughout. Thematically, the collection is pretty broad, touching on things from family, control, and womanhood to relationships and self-exploration. The idea is to use these really personal, and specific, moments or thoughts to describe the emotional nuance of trying to belong and to understand. It’s like coming of age emotionally.
What are you working on now?
August Birthday is the most recent writing project I’ve had, though I also have a literary nonfiction essay I’ve been submitting to literary journals online. In the visual art realm, I’m prepping for an exhibition at the Arts Council next summer together
Artist Katherine Kesey at work in her studio.
The artist and her palette. with Michael Sorrow, and I am always working on new paintings. Currently, I have an ongoing series involving buildings, skies, and street trash which I am pitching to galleries, trying to get representation.
Who are the artists that make you want to create?
New York painter, Alyssa Monks, who I took the painting workshop with. Marvin Espy is a brilliant and kind Charlotte artist also working at C3 Lab with me, Jennifer Willoughby’s poetry book Beautiful Zero, and Lidia Yuknavitch because of her writing and honesty (and because one time she met and worked with Ken Kesey, who I am distantly related to).
Where can we find you online?
I’ve got a website where you can see my portfolio, purchase work, schedule a studio visit, and find a link to August Birthday on Amazon: www.katherinekesey.com Instagram is always a great option to see what’s new — find me @katherinekesey yc
Chris Fox is the Campus Director for Friday Arts Project, an arts non-profit in Rock Hill. He’s a writer and illustrator and you can find him on Instagram @chrisfoxonline