“To make art as a career is a risk, so why hold back?”
Edition 19: An interview with fiber artist and poet Kat Howard
Kat Howard in her studio (image by AJ Lee)
Welcome back folks. January is traditionally a month in which to give up alcohol and start something new, but I’m a little too tired and thirsty for all that. Instead, I have been thinking a lot about motherhood, which in many ways is the ultimate act of reinvention.
Taking as a given that I love my kids more than life itself, I nonetheless have been reflecting on the shocking fact that in 2022 — less than a year since, mid-pandemic, three male billionaires shot rockets into space for the universe’s most expensive “my dick’s bigger than yours” contest — we are still living in a world where a woman is deemed less important, and yet more responsible, than everyone else the moment they medically become a mother. It’s hard to ignore how motherhood is still a lightening rod for misogyny: the burden of systemic inequities for moms has been making headlines due to the outsize negative impact of COVID on women and the sad state of abortion laws in southern states, and current female storytellers like Maggie Gyllenhaal and Claire Vaye Watkins are creating buzz by having the audacity to empathetically portray women (vs men) who choose their desires over family.
My own limited experience is much less dramatic yet disquieting in the accumulation of little shifts. For instance, as soon as I gave birth for the first time, medical staff on the maternity ward addressed me simply as “Mom.” Sayonara, Amy. This weird subjugation of self, from individual to “mother”, is one of the reasons I take great pleasure in getting to know fellow moms — peeling back the layers of responsibility and perfection, and getting to the heart of who they are at their core. Impulses, talents, flaws and all.
So, it was a joy to spend a recent, chilly morning with Kat Howard at her art studio in midtown Kingston, NY. Yes, our kids are in school together, but we passed over that pretty quickly and dove headfirst into her inspiration and practice as an artist. Dressed in head to toe black — a stylistic nod to her minimalist Scandi roots (Kat’s mother is Swedish) and her formative years in New York City — Kat beamed as she talked me through her journey from working at the Whitney when it was still in the brutalist Breuer building on the upper East side, to studying post-graduate poetry and paper art in the Bay Area, through to her current work upstate creating large-scale “fiber art” sculptures.
Kat describes the theme of her work — her north star — as constantly seeking to manifest “how the body carries trauma.” As a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, Kat’s approach to her work is both intensely sensitive and searingly visceral. As a result of her bravery in talking about and tackling this difficult topic, her art connects with people on a deeper level: commissions often come to her from people who have also suffered trauma.
And yet, despite the seriousness of the stimulus for her art, Kat exudes passion and energy. She is gearing up for one of the busiest periods in her career — simultaneously creating (with the help of her trusted assistant Anny Lutwak) around fifteen new pieces for two gallery shows this year, and an ongoing flow of commissions for individuals and architects. As she excitedly pointed out the scraps of material that look like “layers of sediment” wedged onto a shelf running around the room above our heads, the unique silver jacquard stuffed and snake-like by the window, and the deer skin piece she is crafting to represent layers of emotional labor, I could feel myself filling up with a renewed verve to create.
“Some people identify as ‘mother artists’, but my identity is an artist who has children,” Kat told me. I couldn’t have put it better myself.
Here’s more from my conversation with Kat.
‘Prey’ by Kat Howard (photo by Anny Lutwak)
AJ Lee: Kat, thank you so much for inviting me to your studio, the inner sanctum. Tell me about your journey to this exciting stage of your career.
Kat Howard: I studied in Boston initially, then went to work at the Whitney straight out of college. I was managing interactive media projects and acting basically as a random creative person on staff to get people talking, because museums are very siloed.
I loved that work and was there for four years, but then, in 2010, they were transitioning to the new building and they wanted me to be in charge of advertising. I thought “That sounds boring!” So, that spurred me on to go to graduate school out in the Bay Area — I ended up doing two masters degrees at Mills College in Oakland.
The Bay Area scene was very alternative, super queer, especially Mills, an all girls undergrad that was very progressive. The feel of the area was very interdisciplinary, like a pressure cooker of ideas. No one would say ‘that’s crazy’ — they were supportive of me combining art and writing and it helped me think outside of the box artistically, focusing on conceptual thinking and abstraction; how to distill things more and more to the essence of what you’re trying to say to connect more with the viewer or the reader.
After I moved back to NYC from the Bay Area, it was harder for me to romanticize living in the city because I’d already done it. After having all this studio space, it just felt hard to go anywhere, to get to nature. So I moved upstate, wanting balance in life. I didn’t want my art to get lost in the shuffle of living in the city.
AL: It is unusual for someone to be so bold in their visual work and be a master of words. I’m curious about your influences. Who did you look up to as a kid and which artists are you inspired by today?
KH: Oh, I love Louise Bourgeois, Frida Khalo, Kiki Smith. When I was working at the Whitney I got to work with Kara Walker and Jenny Holzer. Jenny really inspired me, her work is text based but about bigger themes. I like Kara Walker’s work, the way that she also talks about trauma through text and storytelling.
I found it tricky to find women artists growing up. My American family is more traditional — lawyers, doctors. But my mum’s Swedish, and we have family in Ireland so I lived in Dublin for a year in high school. I have a bunch of family in Europe who are artists and designers. It was influential to see these women in my family who were living these artistic lives. And the Swedish sensibility — materially it has influenced me, honoring where things come from, that design is so simple and bold, distilled, and the feel it gives you. A lot of Scandi design: everything is so tight, the form just feels right.
With my poetry it is always very minimal, very paired down — when I post about my art I always write about it in a poem. That’s how my creative process starts with writing, and then the visual art comes from asking ‘how can I make someone feel that same way through something physical?’
Kat Howard’s studio in midtown Kingston, NY (image by AJ Lee)
AL: Tell me more about the intent behind your work, and how you grapple with the tension inherent in all art making between the “purity” of the pursuit, and the quest to be seen and validated by others?
KH: The theme of my work has always been about how the body carries trauma. I am the survivor of child sexual abuse and rape in college. I like to hold space for my own expression and other people’s expression of that pain.
I really wrestled with needing validation right out of grad school — I tried to make work that would sell; gauging the temperature of ‘what are other people making’, and seeing where I fit in, versus just focusing on ‘what do you want to say’ and ‘what do you want to make?’ It was a quick turn around once I let go of trying to please others — it felt like a risk, but to make art and do it as a career it’s such a risk anyway, why hold back, why not just go for it?
It felt risky to make these really visceral bodily forms, but I had this desire to make work where people could see the labor of what I was making and translate the essence of the feeling. I find the way to do that is to be more raw. Once I started doing that I found more of an audience — I started talking more about the themes of the work and my history. It felt scary but people connected with the vulnerability. And now my work just keeps getting weirder.
AL: Thank you for sharing that, and I’m glad you’re embracing the weirdness! You actually grew up upstate — like, really upstate. So, what made you choose the Hudson Valley to settle in?
KH: I grew up in Rochester, NY on Lake Ontario; basically Canada! This is the south compared to that. But I always loved the Hudson Valley and I saw that it was a thing that you could own an 18th century house and still walk to get coffee.
I love the contrast of Kingston: its murals and potential; it’s a little bit secret, a little bit strange, which I liked. The city has a lot of character. I fell in love with this house built in 1680 — the beams in the basement are charred black from when the British tried to burn it down in 1776. I love that you can see and feel the history.
Ultimately, it’s the people who live up here that really inspire me. I have a close friend who’s a fellow fiber artist — Toni Brogan. We do retreats at her place in Roxbury in the Catskills, and we push ourselves with materials and ask each other ‘what if?’ People are more immediately themselves here — so many people have chosen to move here, and most of the reasons are that people want to be who they are, with less artifice and more vulnerability, and that inspires me to show up in my own unique way.
Portrait of Kat Howard by VeroFass Photography
AL: It’s a lot — being so vulnerable in your work, creating at a fast pace, being a parent in a pandemic. How do you juggle it and what are you excited for this year?KH: I’ve always been ok with very little sleep - it’s my superpower! When the kids were really little, I had a home studio and I would focus on making the art when they were sleeping at night time.
Right now I have about a 30/30/30 split. I get a lot of requests for private commissions from people connecting to the emotions of the work: they will tell me their story and their trauma, and I try to make art to hold that for them. I also get architects and interior designers, because I work really large scale — they’ll say we have a space for you, what would you create in that space to activate it? I really like that, it still feels very bodily, although I won’t answer requests for things like ‘I want that in black.’ Then there are galleries. I have two shows coming up this year: one in Hudson in the summer at the Elizabeth Moore Fine Art Gallery, and one at Marist College in the Fall.
This is the busiest I’ve ever been. People say ‘why don’t you use existing pieces’ but I like the challenge of exploring ‘here’s where I am now’ — and that inspires me. I am constantly course correcting as an artist; you have to keep coming back to your true north.
‘I Must Like It If I Stay’ by Kat Howard (image courtesy of Kat Howard)
Thank you, Kat, for your bravery and boundless creativity. I can’t wait to see where your true north takes you next.
Look out for Kat’s shows coming up this year at the Elizabeth Moore Fine Art Gallery, and at Marist College in the Fall. Check our her instagram to see the poetry that accompanies her posts, and to enquire about private commissions, you can reach out to Kat at kathowardfiberart@gmail.com.