KAT TOMKA ARTIST STATEMENT

My recent work in tape evolved out of a NEA fellowship I received through the Ragdale Foundation in Chicago. While there, I began to explore conceptual metaphors relating to body image and cultural body ideals. My work makes reference to concealed and at times, not so concealed cultural definitions of beauty and the associative expectations and presumptions of women (i.e. the cultural ideal colliding with the complexities of the physical, emotional reality). Emphasis is on the contrast between interior and the exterior. In this series of investigations, the weightless material of tape underscores my concept.

Providing a delicate and spectral scaffolding, tape is weightless. The material is non-precious. It’s accessibility and function speaks of utility and contemporary life. Tape’s humble associative power underscores my interest in making a universal connection. Tape also binds things together. I use this idea metaphorically as I bind disparate memories, time and experiences together in my work. Bits of dirt, dust, hair, etc. adhere themselves to the sticky tape and embed themselves into the surface. Edges are frayed, giving the feeling of decay, disintegration, the ephemeral: The work goes through a transformative change.

As a transplanted Alaskan, tape also became an avenue for research into Alaskan Yup’ik and Aleutian art forms. Through this research, I became interested in breaking the traditional boundaries of the rectangle: Yup’ik masks reach beyond central forms to envelope space and are used in everyday ritual. The rectangular frame is a device that gives work a space of its own that is separate from the world of the everyday. Over the years, I have become more interested in breaking this barrier between the illusory world and my own. Therefore, the concept of boundaries is becoming more and more important as I work. For example, as my use of light references the temporal, the transparency of tape serves to break temporal boundaries. Aleutian seal-gut parkas also underscore my interest in light/ boundaries/ edges as well as the honest construction of materials.

As an artist, I translate experience. My surfaces are rich in texture, underscoring the overall feeling of cultural record, artifact or historical fragment. Their physicality and historical referencing work together to form intimate yet universal narratives or ideas grown from memory. A complex mechanism of cues and references, my work explores the connections that transform separate moments into a singular investigation, in this case an investigation into the terrain of the body. Transparent space serves as a metaphor for the merging of the temporal. Collaged space unites co-existing realities that mirror complex yet contemporary notions of time. This structure mirrors our present fragmented experience in that the dislocation between the interior self and the collected residue of our acculturated self is represented. Each work stands as a completion of thought using disparate images as well as temporal and juxtaposed spaces. They are encoded stories derived from bits gathered over time. Challenging one to read within the spaces, these works forge associative links that need to be deduced by the viewer.

Underscoring my interest in time and memory, actions that occurred in a particular place over a specific time show themselves on the physical skin of the image. Each line and texture employs yet another way to indicate the place of contact, the marking of a moment, the vibrancy of the process of touching caught and recorded. In the end, the art of making and the process of living become an integrated act. Before I work, I start by touching the skin of the material surface on which I am working. Over time, I realized that an understanding of my materials through touch provides the intimacy and physicality that is so essential to my process. My surfaces become reservoirs of fragmentary impressions. Pigment clings tenuously to scarred and worn membranes. Subtle value changes resonate with quiet authority, creating dense atmospheres that resist probing yet desire to envelop us. Dislocation or disbelief is achieved through the layering of tape.

Possessing inherent material qualities, tape is used as brushstroke. The process is one of minutiae—strip by strip, with each application on tape becoming ritual. Obsessively applied, my art is the continuation of the tradition of women’s work which historically has been that of detail, from planning other’s lives to labor-intensive art forms like quilting. Adopting this feminine focus, detail can provide a mediated avenue to intimacy and meaning.

Hybrid in nature, my work brings into tenuous balance the various disciplines of art and evolves in various forms. I freely move between disciplines to explore my ideas; from drawing, painting, sculpture, fiber and metalsmithing to new media or installation.

My process also greys the boundaries between craft and fine art. Initially trained as a metalsmith, my sense of building/constructing, grows out of my background in craft. The relationship of cultural production to the everyday introduces the question of craft and craft’s dreaded opposition to art. Like other such oppositions within modernism—high/low, culture/nature, form/function and so on—this one is idealogically determined, heirarchically structured and alienating. My footing in both the fine arts and craft allows me to freely walk over this line of separation.

The discussion of the craft vs. art debate also speaks to the separation between Western and Nonwestern production. Art is integrated with life in many Nonwestern cultures. My research is growing in the direction of broken boundaries and I often look to Nonwestern art as a vehicle to remove my work from a traditional Western viewing where rectangular boundaries separate art from everyday life. Cultures that I research are wide-ranging; from Hindu and various Asian art forms to Aboriginal art. The global fusion of ideas is reflected through my iconography, process, material use and formal/ conceptual approaches.

I also explore the mysterious territory between representation and abstraction as I search for an in-between state—playing the past and present against the now. As a result, my work demands a multiple or extended intimate viewing to peal the layers away and allow images or moments to show themselves. The boundaries between figure and ground merge, juxtapose or collide, providing fertile ground for echoing the dualism of the feminine self; a constant reciprocal exchange between conflict/ balance and external/internal realities.