Going Strong: Kathryn Refi

Did you know the OPP blog has been featuring exceptional, living artists since 2011? We are committed to looking at the full trajectory of each Featured Artist's work, as represented on their websites. As an artist myself, I don't think of individual artworks or projects in a vacuum. I'm more interested in how one work leads to another and what drives artists to keep making. So it's exciting to revisit artists interviewed in the first few years of the blog and find out what's changed and what's stayed the same in their practices. Today's artist is Kathryn Refi (@kathrynrefi).

Finger Flowers, 2019. Hand-cut archival inkjet prints. Overall dimensions variable. Each flower is 17 3/4 x 17 3/4 inches.

OtherPeoplesPixels: What's new in your studio, practice or work since you were interviewed back in 2013?

Kathryn Refi: Probably the single greatest change since 2013 is that I moved from Athens, Georgia to New York City. I've been living in Brooklyn since the summer of 2014. It's hard to know all of the specific ways this shift has affected the changes in the content of my work, but it seems inevitable that it has.

All My Edges (in 2cm Squares, in the Shape of a Circle), 2018. Archival inkjet collage on polyester film. 59 1/2 x 49 3/4 inches.

My work had been centered on images and patterns I experienced in my environment and now it is derived from photographic images of my actual body. Before I was trying to negotiate the way my body was interacting with the outside world, while now the entire visual content of the work is my own physical body. I am very surprised that photographic imagery has become the starting point in my process. I think that some of this has to be the subconscious influence of the work of a couple of important friends I have made here in NYC: Jennifer Grimyser and Kate Stone. I think their beautiful work has crept into my brain, where I am processing it and using it as an ingredient in the cooking up of my own images. 

Untitled, 2019. Cut and woven photographs. 64 1/2 x 19 inches.

All of my work starts with life-size inkjet prints of digital images of parts of or all of my body. I am cutting up and rearranging the prints to create new images of myself, patterns, and wall-sized weavings. It is empowering to be in control of the image of my body and manipulate it however I am compelled to. I am enjoying seeing the way my body mutates into new shapes and images as I reorganize its components. A lot of play and visual discovery is happening in my studio. There is still a systematic approach to all of the work, which is a definite through line to what I was making previously. Repetition of form, with an underlying grid structure, continues to be a motif. 

Untitled, 2019. hand-cut inkjet prints. 57 x 38 inches.

I am excited to continue exploring in my studio. I never would have guessed that I would be making the images that I am now and so can't wait to see what I'll be creating in another seven years.

Some recent pattern studies. 2020. Woven inkjet prints. 12 x 12 inches each.