In a Venn diagram, my work occupies a space where painting, sculpture, and craft intersect. My focus on color and composition stems from my formal training as a painter. My use of craft comes from my upbringing in West Virginia where my mother, grandmothers, and great grandmothers sewed, wove, and knitted. The craft-making tradition of Appalachia that I inherited from them influences the artist I am today through the materials and the everydayness of creating and making things that serve and express your life. My artistic practice has two sides, one takes place in my studio where I make sculptures, weavings, sewings, drawings, and paintings and the other occurs in public spaces such as parks, libraries, museums, schools where I have completed 16 projects in the past 10 years. These public art installations have been made with asphalt stickers on brick, rope on a stairwell, and ribbon woven into a chain link fence, an elevator cage, a stair railing, and deer fencing. These techniques of sewing and weaving are a foundation of my sculptures and going full circle influences my paintings. As I engage with the interconnection of the physical forms and materials, my work conveys the tension and contradictions in life.

About Katherine Daniels

Katherine Daniels’ beaded sculptures, weaving, and site-specific installations have been exhibited nationally and internationally, including throughout New York City, at the Hunterdon Art Museum in Clinton, NJ, and in “To Weave Dreams”, at Miniartextil, Le Bellfroi Art Center in Montrouge, France. Her awards include a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in painting, the Clare Weiss Emerging Artist Award for Public Art, two Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Manhattan Creative Communities Grants, and selection as a participant in the Bronx Museum’s Artist in the Marketplace. She has also received studio grants from the Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation. PS 122, the Henry Street Settlement, and ChaShaMa. Daniels earned a B.F.A. from Rhode Island School of Design and an M.F.A from Johnson State College in Vermont. Born in Idar Oberstien Germany, she was raised in Huntington West Virginia, and currently lives and works in New York City.