KATHERINE POWERS

Initially plastic bags attracted me near my studio in Chinatown. I saw orange red bags bright in the sunlight with the color of the contents showing through. Here was packaging, an outer surface, a container. It made products appealing, it protected and transported what was inside. When we are finished with this packaging we drop it. It tumbles around under our feet, and elsewhere. We foul our nest, but we are in love with our excesses. All of nature recycles. What have we dropped that might be useful? Garbage is such an abundant source of materials. I want to reverse the flow, take a mass produced discard, put it through an Alchemic process and make it into something unusual.

In this recent body of work I recycle images of older plastic works and layer more plastic on top of them. I aim to have the collaged plastic and image blend, confusing the boundary between two and three dimensions. I think about our invisible side, how we experience and perceive it, and how it is made visible by it’s effect on our surface.

I live and work in New York, my studio is in Williamsburg. I also have a long term Shiatsu practice and teach Shiatsu at Swedish Institute.