an in-progress drawing/painting for an upcoming show.
Category Archives: Artwork
100 Indianas
This is what a box of Indianas looks like. Several hours of cutting and there are now over 100 of them. They have since been strung as garland and are ready to hit the shelves.
The ‘I Heart Indiana’ garland will be available through me* or at Silver in the City on Mass Ave this week, go check it out!
Each garland has 10 little Indiana’s is hand painted and cut and comes in a varity of colors on a strand approximately 72 inches long. I caution against hanging in a humid or moisture-rich environment (kitchens, bathrooms, outside in an Indiana August) to be sure the colors don’t run.
Enjoy!
* for those who have already ordered their garland, no worries! They are on the way!
Hoosier Decor
I’ll admit to getting obsessed with a project idea (paper airplanes being one of the most recent). Lately, it’s been putting tiny versions of things on strings. Last month it was hearts in honor of Valentine’s Day. This month? I’m showing my Indiana pride with state garland.
It began with this stencil of the Hoosier state and a late night paper painting session. I also learned my lesson from the hearts last time around and purchased a punch that makes very small holes. My hands are saved from making holes for the string with just a large sewing needle!
Several garlands later and they are ready! Each garland has ten little handpainted Indianas in a variety of colors. I’m making them available via the blog and Facebook today for $22.50, and if there are any left, I’ll add them to my Etsy Shop.
UPDATE: These Hoosier darlings will now be available at Silver in the City beginning next week! I’m so excited!
And now on Etsy
After a three year hiatus, I re-launched my Etsy shop last weekend. I’ve long hoped to find a new venue to promote and sell some of my work and maybe this is it?
Primed with a spattering of smaller works on canvas and paper, I plan to add more as time allows, but the goal is to find good, forever homes for some of my little ones.
Most of the shop is filled with works that have seen other exhibits or were studies for ongoing series of larger works. I float back and forth between a love of working on tiny and big paintings. How great is it that I don’t have to choose? I do the same when it comes to the medium. For the most part, these pieces are done in acrylic paint on canvas, but look closer for graphite, house paint, collage elements, bits of old paintings, and more.
I hope you’ll visit and consider starting or continuing your Kate O. collection! Click on an image to be taken to it’s Etsy listing.
PS: Be my first ever Etsy customer and I’ll include a fun free gift with your purchase!
2013 | forty
More paper planes. Really, it’s an obsession at this point.
Kinda like art school
I haven’t been actively making art lately, too many other things getting in the way. I have been working on new paintings here and there, but haven’t been motivated to work daily the way I used to. So, this afternoon I put out the call for an assignment – art school style. Several suggestions were made, and I’ll do them all, but here’s the first. John McKee of Ashland Gallery gave me the prompt to do a self-portrait… left-handed (I’m a rightie). So here we go – me. Drawn and then painted left-handed.
2013 | nineteen, twenty
valentine’s day garland. ten handpainted hearts all in a row for $12, available now. contact me at kate [at] kateoberreich [dot] com to purchase.
Million Miler
I recently completed and delivered a special commission for a friend to give as a Christmas gift to her boyfriend (is that the right word?). Anyway, Sarah and I worked together, mostly via e-mail and text to come up with the right image for Pete.
Pete recently surpassed the million-mile mark with United Air and the painting commemorates that milestone.
The idea was to take my recent paper airplane obsession and work it into an airport scene complete with a business traveler (Pete). The first sketch is above.
The idea morphed a bit to have the traveler seated (above).
And finally the finished painting! Sarah and Pete liked the sketch quality of the original drawings and so they were incorporated.
This was a fun commission to do, I don’t pick them up often. Thank you Sarah and congrats to Pete on becoming a Million-Miler!
Create and Capture
I was pretty excited to get this fun new book in today’s mail. It’s Create and Capture a limited edition compilation of sketchbook pages from all over the world put together by Art House Co-op as part of the Sketchbook Project.
I’m even more excited that I have a small corner of a page!
What’s it all mean?!
I tend to use a lot of symbolic imagery in my work. I assign meaning to most of the objects that show up in paintings and drawings. For example, houses are probably the most prevailant symbol in my work and the meaning is pretty obvious. They’re about home. Sometimes an actual home, sometimes home as a feeling or sense of place.
There are times that the symbolic objects begin to emerge and I don’t quite know what they mean to me yet. There are a couple that have been making the rounds. More recently, paper airplanes, birdcages and bowls have starting making a significant appearance. The paper planes take on new meaning depending upon their placement and position. I just finished a piece (below) in which, in the corner, are seventeen planes in a pile with one more off “flying” (it’s really held in place by a string).
So what does it mean? I know what I think it means, but even as the artist, I’m not always right. Sometimes I’m surprised at what others see in a painting that I somehow missed. And that’s pretty damn exciting.
New York Magazine art critic Jerry Saltz (also of Bravo’s Work of Art: The Next Great Artist fame) said in his keynote speech this week at Expo Chicago, “Art is not about understanding. Art is about experience. Nobody listens to a song and says, ‘I don’t understand that’.”
I disagreed for a while after reading this. Of course art is about understanding?! But the more I thought about it the more I came around to Jerry’s point of view. I think everyone experiences art and music differently. Whether or not one understands the meaning I intended for a painting is, in the end, irrelevant. I won’t be around all the time to explain it. And so I like the idea of one experiencing a painting (or a song, or a poem) and seeing what they get out of it.
It should be no secret that I’m a Pinterest junkie. There are a lot of inspirational quotes tossed about over there and most of the time I ignore them. They don’t make me feel inspired or comforted (though some are really pretty funny). One that’s been making the rounds a lot lately that has stuck with me says, “I’m responsible for what I say, not what you understand.”
So, I know what I’m trying to say with this painting. What is it that you’re experiencing?
