Artist Statement

If you want to tell my story, tell it in art. I make art out of what worries me, what makes me laugh, what makes me mad.

Re: Tin

The language of my tin constructions uses an alphabet of adopted /adapted components that were designed for other uses. The soldering process comes from the stained glass world. Armature materials from the building industry. The tin itself contributes cultural iconography from the cooky-sharing, tea-packaging, grocery, and thrift store cultures.

After I’m done with them, cookie tins no longer resemble cookie tins. Sona tubes/ plaster/ spray-foam insulation are no longer hardware store inventory. Cloth is no longer cloth. It all speaks now of forest/village/global communities and environments, with a highly detailed colourful imprecision.

I make use of the world’s materials and the world’s innuendos. But these are my own sculptural constructions. My processes, my little jokes and commentary. With the hot solder, an aroma of cinnamon or lavender rises up, from the previous occupants of the tins. So, as with any mixed media sculpture, the almost-scent of the found object flavours the piece. Reminiscent of how we are all always inescapably shuffling through the magical detritus of this complex world.

Re: No One is an Island Series

I wonder if the world is surprised at where human evolution has led. Who would have thought that something as beautiful and brilliant as human beings could turn against the very ingredients of our own existence? Each of us has just borrowed a set of molecules from the universe’s available supply. And we will need to give it all back one of these days, like returning a book to the library. So how do we manage to see ourselves as NOT part of the world? We are made out of exactly the same stuff.

Re: Dark Lite: Outside the Bubble/There is no Cake Series

Yup its worrisome alright. Though my nice little life hasn’t changed much. Yet.

But though the transparent walls of my tiny safe bubble, I can see the howling warplanes out there, the rising water, the rubble, the threats. The oligarchs suggest cake but of course there is no cake. I’m still constructing globes, islands, trees, villages, figures, adorned with tin text strips, old rhinestone jewelry. But now the world is on fire. Books are burning. Bombs fall on flooded fields. The earth is bleeding and bleeding. War wont bring peace.

In my studio, I bring monstrous war imagery over from the doom side and decorate it with dolls eyes, typewriter parts, rusted chain saw blades, rhinestones. I put frilly beaded dresses on guns. I send cakes and china teacups to the doom side, fill them with fabricated bombs, blood, flood, fire.

I’ve always been too small to have any faith in my power to change anything. I can only tell stories about it. No way of changing anything if you want took at it.

Whether we are willing to admit it or not, we are always running back and forth across the line between beauty/delight and horror/cruelty. It’s all part of our universe. I’ve spend my whole life trying to take that in.

Re: Musical Chairs with Enough Chairs Series

In this version of Musical Chairs, there are enough for everybody, extra chairs even for the smallest, slowest, most mild-mannered of us. The question is: If there really are not enough chairs to go around, how do we want to deal with this? By forcing the smallest to fight each other for a seat at the table? Notice the Bigs seem to have enough chairs. Do we like to live in a world in which the Littles don’t?

Re: 2xTS: Where have All the Peaches Gone? Series

Some of us love having peaches (breasts), want even more. Some of us have had them taken away by force. Some of us like them so little that we arranged to have them taken away. Some of us never had them to begin with.

Whether or not top surgery (TS) is part of a gender-affirming process, it calls up gender and trans issues, and comments on perceptions of peaches (ie breasts) in current culture: love hate adoration scorn obsession ridicule abuse.

Some of us want peaches so much. Some of us want them so little.

Re: Shut Up Series

The soundscape is a commons. Like air. Like water. When did we sign off on all this racket?? We seem to be able to ban dumping chemicals in to the rivers, so couldn’t we make some agreements about helicopters and jets and leaf blowers and loud music and motorcycles??

Here’s what I think: Art is by its nature free and equal. Even if the culture pretends only some people can make art. No matter what ridiculous hoops y

ou have to jump through to exhibit or sell your art, and when you peel back all the class race and gender bias, all the commercial transactions, you can just know that art at its centre is a free zone where no rules apply. And how utterly rude to cram hierarchy and judgment and exclusion on top of this creative energy. Which is some of the best most healing, most rewarding energy in the universe.

So if somebody is knocking at your front door with a sales pitch about promoting your brand, you can just slam the door in their face and go right out your back door into the limitless free wilderness of your imagination.

And this is exactly what I am trying to protect and promote and share

PS: Short Bio

Sculpture has always been Kathy Ross’ main interest since discovering the 3-d world at age 18, carving a bar of ivory soap with a nail file. She has managed to be self-supporting and self-employed since 1978, always by making something you could loosely call art. Kathy Ross has exhibited and sold in galleries, museums, shops, art festivals, retail, wholesale, online, and offline.