Statement
I combine crochet, a fiber technique, with painting, sculpture, enameling, and metalsmithing, to weave together domestic craft and fine art meant for public display outside the home. Dualities inhabit my works, simultaneously invoking feminine/masculine, domestic/industrial, organic/artificial, antique/modern, clarity/distortion, past/present, and intimate/public. I use traditionally feminine and domestic craft techniques to stitch, crochet, and build upon and with industrially mass-produced materials and traditionally masculine media.
Like many fiber techniques, crochet is often pigeonholed as a quaint agrarian craft, traditionally women’s work done for family and domestic use, but unfit for consideration in highbrow fine art. To combat this, my various bodies of work run the gamut from utilizing crochet as the building blocks of the works’ form to the method for exploring structure, form, composition, and boundaries while incorporating texture and color and various combinations thereof. I also utilize antique, vintage, and self-made crochet doilies to explore layering and abstraction, particularly in the compositions of two-dimensional works. By building crochet into, around, and upon fine art, my artistic practice insists the value of this feminine craft be acknowledged and viewed as fine art.
Like many fiber techniques, crochet is often pigeonholed as a quaint agrarian craft, traditionally women’s work done for family and domestic use, but unfit for consideration in highbrow fine art. To combat this, my various bodies of work run the gamut from utilizing crochet as the building blocks of the works’ form to the method for exploring structure, form, composition, and boundaries while incorporating texture and color and various combinations thereof. I also utilize antique, vintage, and self-made crochet doilies to explore layering and abstraction, particularly in the compositions of two-dimensional works. By building crochet into, around, and upon fine art, my artistic practice insists the value of this feminine craft be acknowledged and viewed as fine art.
Bio
Artist / Metalsmith / Jeweler / Crocheter
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Katie Schutte was born and raised in Ohio. Her work is the result of combining crochet with various jewelry, painting, and sculpture techniques. As a child, she often saved up to purchase jewelry-making kits and taught herself to crochet in high school. She received her Bachelor of Fine Art from Kent State University in Crafts, concentrating in Jewelry, Metals, and Enameling (2006) and her Master of Fine Art from Miami University in Jewelry Design and Metals (2011). While at Miami, she taught Jewelry and Metalsmithing courses to students from various majors and received several grants and awards.
Her work was recently included in the book Mastering Contemporary Jewelry Design, at Art in the Woods on the American Players Theatre grounds, in Art from the Heartland Biennial at the Indianapolis Art Center, in Looks Good on Paper at Pyramid Atlantic Art Center, in Textiel Plus Magazine Issue 268, and in Fantastic Fibers at Yeiser Art Center, among others. A recent solo exhibition, Distorted Recollections: Paper, Paint, and Fiber Works at the Dubuque Museum of Art, featured a selection of indoor as well as outdoor work. She currently lives in the Driftless area of southwest Wisconsin with her husband and a clowder of cats. |