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 yet to come.
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Driven by a fascination with the overlooked and discarded things of yesteryear — of what will no longer come to be. I am drawn to ephemeral worlds, 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 incomplete 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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Additionally guided by Derridean deconstruction, I collect artifacts from the banks of waterbodies, transforming them through drawing, printmaking, painting, photography, digital design, and sculpture, while embracing the idea that the meaning is not often singular but fluid, often conflicting and ever-evolving.
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Inspired by mycology’s role as both the giver and taker of life, I see fungi as an integral part of my art, transforming loss into connection and growth. Like fungal mycelial networks, my work unites fragmented familial elements into cohesive narratives.
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I invite the viewer 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 unknown through my work.