ARTIST STATEMENT
As an artist and film editor, being mindful of composition, pacing, rhythm, action, and intuition is not only paramount in film editing it is useful when making and appreciating art. I like to create stories with bold marks and colors, often documenting my experiences, feelings, and the current events of the day. Community and civic issues such as voting rights, gender equality, and pay equity weigh on my mind and sometimes come out in my art. Like editing motion picture dailies, writing, and rearranging furniture, I also enjoy editing my artwork to create new installations and evolving messages. Paper, wood, canvas, textiles, and repurposed materials are all considered and utilized in my practice as substrates and layered with paint and ink, or collaged with print material. I first created an equal pay symbol by turning the double-barred dollar sign on its side, then discovered equal signs in other currency symbols that became letters in my International Equal Pay Alphabet. Fictional symbols and symmetrical letters that have an inherent equal balance were used to complete the alphabet. The idea of time passing is likely the impulse behind my art-making. I am here. This may also be the incentive behind many people’s social media posts, tweets, and shared stories. I exist, I am still here. It is comforting to know through our shared collective memories and art we remain alive.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Kathryn Hempel is an interdisciplinary artist and an Emmy award-winning commercial film editor. Through daily observations, experimental mark-making, and stream of consciousness, Hempel’s daily art practice has led to the creation of more than a thousand smaller-scale paintings, drawings, collages, and sculptures, and a series of more extensive works, such as the International Equal Pay Alphabet. During the spring and summer of 2024, Hempel exhibited her work and taught fabric painting workshops at the Bei Koc Gallery in Hannover, Germany, SD Studios in Berwyn, IL, and the Kunstraum Reuter Gallery in Berlin, Germany. She has been frequently published in and on the front and back covers of the Nerve Cowboy journal of poetry, fiction, and music and her art is the cover album art on The Counterfactual, Throw it Away, and The Imperial Sound’s, The New AM. Hempel’s art has also been used on the sets of independent feature films and commercial motion picture productions.
© Kathryn E. Hempel