Description
ARTIST STATEMENT
I am a storyteller and art is my story. As an artist, filmmaker, and film editor, I create with fast mark-making and bold colors in many different mediums; including drawing, painting, photography, film, video, and sculpture. My art, like film editing, can be edited, to create series, installations, symbols, and messages. Paper, wood, canvas, textiles, and repurposed materials are all considered and utilized in my practice. I have found that being mindful of composition, pacing, rhythm, action, and intuition involved with storytelling is not only paramount in editing, but is also useful when making, painting, writing, or appreciating art.
Current events, daily observations, symbols, text, patterns, grids, faces, figures, abstracted landscapes, and nature are all brought together in my work. Community and civic issues such as voting rights, gender equality, and pay equity often weigh on my mind and sometimes come out in my art. Discovering and making peace through this process is my most persistent calling.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Kathryn Hempel is an interdisciplinary artist, Emmy award-winning Film Editor, VP/Partner of Cutters Studios, and a recent MFA graduate from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. One of her current projects is to make a new piece of art every day in 2022. The daily work often leads to a larger more finished series, such as the International Equal Pay Alphabet developed after first designing an equal pay symbol by turning the dollar sign on its side. The other individual letters of the alphabet are also actual, obsolete, or fictional currency symbols with inherent equal symbols.
© Kathryn Hempel