KH

Karolyn Hatton

My work consists of interrelated strands that include tapestries, banners, weavings, objects, and an ongoing series of wearable capes or wraps. I regard my practice as both sculpture and collage, objects in space that synthesize a whole from disparate parts. For the past decade the majority of my works have incorporated found items such as printed t-shirts, clothing, commercial packaging, and furniture. The materials still bear traces of their former lives but are transformed, embellished, redeployed. The combinations of elements that occur are suffused with a female perspective, disruptive humor, provisional open-endedness and playful rebelliousness.

My recent wall-hangings and capes are informed by the language of abstraction and gesture obliquely toward its history while engaging with the democratizing presence of DIY, craft and female labor. Rather than building from a planned design, I more frequently respond to existing, discarded fragments and off cuts, working provisionally so that each work is the collision of parts that coalesce in the moment.

My cashmere capes have evolved from a series of protest banners, as I felt the need to move works off the wall and into public space. Initially inspired by Gees Bend quilts and Bauhaus textiles, each is a one-off, pieced together from cast-off, often moth-eaten, cashmere sweaters. Organic in contour and process, they are meditations on luxury, sensuality, visibility, utility, and survival.

Selected Shows

Curating