Red Lodge Clay Center Long-Term Resident 2011-12, Short-Term Resident 2015
Katie Coughlin’s work investigates what it means to claim space through understanding the physical edge of the body. Her multi-disciplinary work situates itself somewhere between object/sculpture/performance. She received her MFA from The Ohio State University(2018) and her BFA from Alfred University(2010). Katie has been an Artist in Resident at Red Lodge Clay Center and Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts. She has most recently received the Outstanding Student Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture Award from the International Sculpture Center as well as the Warren Mackenzie Advancement Award from Northern Clay Center. A native New Yorker, Katie returned to the city in 2018 and lives and works in Brooklyn.
As a teenager, there were constantly clothes to take off the line. We had, at one point, 3 clotheslines reaching out from the windows to the telephone pole tucked away in the left corner of our backyard. The reaching of arms out the window as our legs anchored us inside was a brutal test of our ability to balance and stretch. Our body became a part of this apparatus–as it often does when we complete physical tasks; our joints propel us forward while shoulders and hips and heads bear weight and get worked. When our bodies become mechanisms, where does the boundary lie? Is the edge of our body the tip of our finer or is it the ends of the bristles of the broom as we sweep the floor?
I investigate the notions of home, vessel, body and clothing through the manipulation of space and material. Although clay is most often the place where I begin my work, I use other mediums, specifically cloth and wood to expand my sculptures. These material-collaborative apparatuses allow me to incorporate the human body, therefore placing my work somewhere between object, sculpture, and performance.