ARTIST STATEMENT
My work explores the possibilities of perception and experience through an investigative, process-oriented approach. I work in a variety of media, often combining traditional paint and ink techniques with fiber arts to create tactile paintings, installations, and drawings. My practice is a journey of connecting, discovering, and evolving.
I take inspiration from a variety of art movements such as 70s Feminism, Romanticism, and Op Art, as well as my own sensory experience with light, shadow, color, pattern, and texture in my surroundings, both natural and man-made. My experiences as a woman and single mother informs my work.
Care and patience are interwoven as I incorporate laborious techniques such as intricate sewing, or methodically hand-painting and cutting individual stripes. Layered elements oscillate between bright and neutral, frayed and smooth, straight and wavy, or taut and loose. At times, my process becomes meditative and transformative, creating a space for presence.
In my recent fabric paintings, bright, sunset colored paint peeks through black and white striped fabric that has been variously altered by cutting, tearing, draping, and painting processes, disrupting the perpetuity of the original pattern to reveal optical movement, and shifting color. Through experimentation and intuition, patterns and imagery cycle through refinement, distortion, and reinvention.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Kelly Sturhahn is a mixed media artist, professor, and mother with a Master of Fine Arts degree from Hunter College in New York City. Her work has been widely featured including select solo exhibitions in Florida at 6th Street Container in Miami, and at the AGB Museum of Art in Lakeland, as well as solo projects in New York at Ann Street Gallery, Times Square Gallery, and Skylight Gallery. Select group exhibitions include Cheryl Hazan Contemporary (NY), Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art (NY), Prism Arts Gallery (PA), Boca Museum of Art (FL), Tempus Projects (FL), Fardom Gallery (NY), Hudson Guild (NY), Garbageman Astronaut Space (OR), Artists Space (NY), and Jack the Pelican Presents (NY), among others; as well as art fairs including Scope New York and Grendel Miami (Art Basel), and a current, traveling exhibition produced by the National Audubon Society.
Sturhahn was pleased to receive an Artist Honorarium from the Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art in New York for her site-specific installation, “Along the Hudson”. She was also a Visiting Artist and Lecturer at The Ringling College of Art and Design in Florida and awarded an Artist-in-Residence and grant at The Vermont Studio Center (VT), and at Salem Art Works (NY). Sturhahn’s work has also been highlighted in publications such as, “Exploring Studio Materials: Teaching Creative Art Making to Children”, published by Oxford University Press. Her artwork may be found in both private and public collections throughout the United States and Europe.
© Kelly Sturhahn