Tidal Wave

¡Katie B Funk!

Interview by L. Valena
January 30, 2024

Can you please start by describing the prompt that you responded to?

I responded to a painting titled Femme. I was first really struck with the color choice, and how the piece was both simple and complex. I love that prompts give you such a wide avenue, but at the same time they provide a structure to work with. I kind of wrestled with figuring out if I wanted to do something digital or with paint. But I started responding to what I was looking at and sketched it a few times to get a feel for what the artist was feeling as they were creating it. I like to do that with different works, trying to get a feel for their mark-making process. Then I decided to respond with that feeling.

Do you mean the feeling you had making that gesture on the paper?

Yeah. I was really intrigued because it's not an easy thing to replicate. I couldn't get it to exactly match what I saw. I wanted to think in that loosely-tight but tightly-loose kind of line work, and think about the color scheme, to then make the response that I made.

Cool! What happened next?

I have a catalog of body part images from some other projects I've been working on. The body has been at the forefront of what I do, and my own body is what I use as my vocabulary. That was one part. And then the other part is I recently got introduced to oil-based clay in a sculpture class. I'd heard of it before, but hadn't really worked with it. My understanding was that it is very messy. And it can be – some of them are super soupy and gooey, but some versions are more like Play-Doh.

Because they have oil in them, they're never going to dry out, and you have this forever plasticity to work with. I think bodies do the same thing. I have this bankroll of positions or movements, veins I'll work with within the body to capture what I'm looking for. Bodies get stiff, they get sore, and tired. They get older, they get worn out. The clay can change as well. If you set it out and it's really cold, it's really hard to work with. As I learned from experience, it can also get very soupy if it gets too hot in the Vegas sun. That malleability had me interested in combining two disparate materials: photo collage and this oil-based clay. How could I put them together in a way that reflected qualities of both of them?

These are images of your own hand?

Yes.

Tell me about this gesture. What are you evoking with it?

The hands themselves were discovered after the fact. You shoot a bunch of shots and look at what you have later. When they're stacked up, they remind me of a tidal wave. There's a lot of movement in it, even though it's a still thing. I've thought back to ways in which the artist I responded to pushed out lines and brought them back, and pushed them out and brought them back. There was an interesting correlation between that happening in that work and what I discovered in the aftermath of the photo shoot. I've been working a lot with full-body, head to toe, but now I'm interested in pieces of the body, as serial-killer as that sounds. It's a new avenue to make with. I was connecting with that push and pull feeling that the piece I responded to was giving.

Tell me more about the materials.

It's one single image, cut out from the paper, and then just pushed into the clay. I tend to squeeze the clay a lot, and leave a lot of finger marks, so they become very spinal. I really liked that suddenly it became a frame, or at least a kickstand. I work with clay in a ceramics capacity as well, and I think it's interesting that a lot of times you see the fired thing but you don't see it when it was able to be changed.

I love it when my work can more or less take a little chewing and digesting to understand what it is you're looking at. That's also why I took the thing that I made, and put it in front of a bush, and then in front of a wall, and then got an extreme overhead angle. I really like it when works can chameleon. I really like to respond to the space that I'm in, and install my works in a way to respond to the architecture, lighting or colors. Something that's going on in the space to engage the work in a new way.

What haven't we talked about yet?

I don't know the right word for this, but I love when you're looking at something and you're not sure whether or not it's real. Is it sculpture? Is it a photo? Is it digital? I really like working in that capacity, and making things that make you question what you're looking at. I don't know whether it's shyness, but whatever it is that makes me squirm when people ask me what I do is probably because I do so many different things. I don't think I've quite figured out how to succinctly say what I do, so I usually say collage, sculpture and installation. I also like to paint and draw, write, and all these other things. I'm in grad school for a second round, and still trying to figure out what my 'thing' is. Some people make work about identity, the environment, social justice, architecture. All these different categories, and I'm still trying to figure out where I fit. Because my interests are kind of wide, I'm trying to use that to my advantage now.

I don't think you have to choose, but I know what you mean! I think a lot of people do choose, and I'm sometimes a little jealous of them to be honest. But I know I can't choose, and I think it's a perfectly reasonable way to be an artist.

It's so true. I think we want to categorize because that's just how the human brain tends to work. If I put it in a category, then I can understand what it is. But when you can't really put it in a category, you're like, "What is this?" But I think leaning into that unknown or discomfort is starting to show itself as an advantage, an opportunity to widen the scope even further and see what can be made.

Now that you've gone through this process, do you have any advice for another artist approaching this project for the first time?

I think stepping out of your comfort zone is often said. But I would say that the way you initially see the prompt and think you're going to respond may be quite far from what you're actually going to do. The way in which you work and think is the way you work and think, so now that you're being asked to respond to the way someone else is working and thinking, it's like stepping into a different music genre you don't usually listen to.

Really try to see how the artist was working, and in the end your response could be something you've never tried before. Any time two different things can come together and make something new is a great opportunity for both artists involved, and for people to see it. To really give yourself the chance to dive into this is a really valuable tool and experience.

Call Number: Y123VA | O123VA.fuTi

Katie B Funk: Building a mercurial space in both the making and the made, her work endlessly chases the spaces that allow for static work to come alive and live work to stand still. Peering through multi-sourced lens in a cross pollinated practice, she hunts the possibilities of a tender construction through deconstruction, always making certain to leave a light on down the hall.