Katherine Watts
BIOGRAPHY
Katherine E. Watts is an interdisciplinary artist based in Evansville, IN. She received her MFA from the University of Louisville with honors in 2021 and a BS in Art with an emphasis on graphic design, with extensive studies in Printmaking and Figure Drawing, from the University of Southern Indiana in 2007.
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She has since then been included in numerous exhibitions; most notably at Jasper Arts Center and the Thyen-Clark Cultural Center, Mccutchan Art Center, and Pace Galleries at USI, the Portland Museum in Portland, Louisville, KY, Las Laguna Art Gallery in Laguna Beach, CA, and the Cressman Center for Visual Arts in Louisville, KY.
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Watts is currently an active artist and instructor of art and design at the University of Southern Indiana; she teaches both studio and digital arts. Her research includes drawing/inking techniques, mycology, ecological art, eco art theory, and found object printmaking/ sculpture.
ARTIST STATEMENT
As an interdisciplinary artist creating through both two- and three-dimensional design, I explore the relationship of beauty and decay, humanity and the natural world, the forgotten and the unknown yet-to-come.
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Driven by a fascination with the overlooked and the discarded. I am drawn to ephemeral places, places where catastrophe has left its mark, and spaces where nostalgia runs deep within their veins.
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Embracing the ruinenlust of the Romantic era, I incorporate weathered and fragmented forms into my work. I engage with these as both relics and stimuli, echoing Georg Simmel’s theory of ruins as transformation, in which human creation and nature converge.
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Guided by Derridean deconstruction, I collect artifacts from the banks of rivers and lakes, transforming them through drawing, printmaking, painting, photography, digital design, and sculpture. I embrace the idea that the meaning is not often singular but fluid, often conflicting, and ever evolving.
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I’m fascinated by the study of mycology and how fungi both create and sustain life but also break it down; I see them as a key part of my work and research, turning loss into connection and new growth. Like fungal mycelial networks, my work unites fragmented familiar elements into cohesive narratives, like puzzle pieces getting lost and then finding their way to a new home.
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I invite my viewers to explore the beauty of the overlooked, to linger in the ruins of memory and time where the forgotten reshapes itself, and imagine themselves in the worlds of the familiar unknown through my work.