ARTIST STATEMENT
Katie Short honors the extended life of the light bulb in BURNOUTS, installations where the phantom voices of materials are given new form, value, and meaning. Typically defined by its performance as an emitter of light, the artist also conceives of the functional bulb as an absorber and witness of experience. Short applies heat and oxidation—elements once considered dangerously fatal to the essential filament—to release the discarded bulbs from their previous utilitarian obligation as lighting elements. By exposing the worn-out bodies of bulbs to the high heat of a kiln, a once protective layer of glass collapses from a state of doing into a state of being. In this process, these burnouts discover the space and permission to define their own purpose in this world.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Katie Short is a Chicago-based artist, working in sculpture. Her practice is grounded in playful and purposeful collaboration with objects, their identities, and reflected empathy. She pursues profound as it is performed in the phenomena of everyday materiality.
Short received a Master of Fine Arts in Ceramics at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Sculpture from College For Creative Studies, in Detroit. She is a past recipient of the Edward L. Ryerson Fellowship at SAIC.
She is currently living in Oak Park, Illinois.
© Katie Short