Katie Shanks (they/them)…

is a Los Angeles based fiber artist. Since receiving their BFA in Drawing and Painting from California State University Long Beach in 2010, they have emphasized the cultivation of community and connection—as a founding member of the art collectives Somewhere in LA, Level Ground, and Acceptable Risk Los Angeles and taking part in artist run initiatives and exchanges such as High Beams, BLA Connect, NOMAD, and TAM Forum. Over the years, Shanks has enriched their practice taking scenic byways through millinery, fashion, installation, and performance—embracing the multifaceted nature of the work and always pursuing new mediums to best communicate feeling and convey meaning. Their work has long been inspired by the landscapes—natural and urban—that surround them in their vast and varied home-state of California. Accepted into Tulane’s MFA Program in Sculpture in the Fall, it will be necessary to say goodbye in order to close this chapter to open and begin writing the next.

Moving across mediums and genres, I utilize a variety of tactile and labor-intensive craft techniques to condense as much information as possible into a singular plane. Patterns and cycles embedded within those compositions are then revealed through digital shifts, multiplication, scaling, repetition. Those are then physically deconstructed, recombined, and layered—base materials for sculptural forms which can be collapsed into a flat surface but instead boldly thrust themselves into the world—forcing one to navigate and more fully consider the physical space the viewer and artwork jointly occupy.

My Sense of Place work is rooted in our experience of landscape and space, endeavoring to harness the wide-open spaces of nature and the rhythms of our bodies moving through and across it. Paradoxically, in the very environment humans typically seek protection from, I felt safest and most secure. However, the conditions of our natural world are themselves so greatly destabilized by rampant industrial exploitation and the escalating effects of climate change. This refuge requires its own protection from disruptive human elements.

Madrona Marsh fully embodies this dichotomy—a (seasonally) wet, but always wild, oasis in the pavement desert of strip malls and parking lots which surround it. Offering respite and green space to the human community and habitat and refuge for native flora and fauna, this pocket of urban wildlife is an invaluable gem. It has required dedicated efforts of volunteers and advocates for the past 50 years to preserve and maintain this delicate ecosystem.

The common threads that run through both bodies of work are shelter and structure. Shelter evokes a sense of protection and shielding, providing respite in a safe haven. Structure can refer to a building, edifice, or construction, but it is also the arrangement of and relations between the disparate elements of something complex.

What is it to exist as an embodied consciousness in this world? Beyond the self, how do we understand and navigate the larger bodies we are a part of—family, community, society, ecosystems—and how do we cultivate a sense of security for those fragile vessels we inhabit through our relationships to each as they change over time? I make spaces for us to contemplate how best to support and shelter one another.

-Katie Shanks