Thursday April 1st, 2021, 6:30-7:30p CST
Zoom link: https://smu.zoom.us/j/98494999715
Zoom Meeting ID: 984 9499 9715
Register here to receive passcode: https://forms.gle/ywFDFEmLEVPQrWy69

Visiting Artist Katie Bell will be giving an artist talk  on Thursday, April 1st, at 6:30-7:30p CST. Come join us!

Preregistration is required to received passcode.

Katie Bell is an artist originally from Rockford, Illinois (b.1985).  She received her BA from Knox College and her MFA in Painting from the Rhode Island School of Design. Bell has shown her work at a variety of venues, including the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center, Smack Mellon, Locust Projects, and the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum. She was an artist in residence at the Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation’s Space Program and awarded a fellowship in painting by the New York Foundation for the Arts. She is currently preparing for an upcoming solo exhibition this spring at Spencer Brownstone Gallery (NYC). Bell lives and works in New York, NY.

Artist Statement

I make physical, sculptural works that are based off of architecture and found objects. I gather material that hovers between nameable and nameless, function and functionless. I am looking for color, shape, weight and confusion in its description. Objects and materials that transform depending on their surroundings. I search for some of my material on Craigslist and pick it up from someone’s living room. I go to salvage yards and sift through piles of discarded material. I fabricate objects, armatures, and paintings based off of what I find. 

My current work investigates ideas from the Russian Constructivists, as El Lissitzky puts it, “interchange station between painting and architecture”. The wall becomes the armature for the material to situate itself acting as paint strokes, fields of color, and abstract shapes. The gallery becomes the stage for the objects to encounter one another, acting as both character and set. Using woodworking tools as a form of mark making and construction materials as a palette, I build paintings and sculptures. The compositions are in a state of freeze-frame, as if holding their breath until the viewer leaves.