Unraveling is a Fine Art
exhibition bringing together
ceramic sculptures and fiber
arts. It is the first
collaboration between fiber
artist Kat Howard and
ceramicists Benedicte and
Jerome Leclere. The work was shown at the historic
Fuller Building in Kingston,
NY in November 2022.

 

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The Exhibition

Unraveling is a conversation about the conflict of attraction and repulsion through the lens of two contrasting mediums: fiber and clay.

This collection of works is centered around a cruel tension that
resides undetected at first look, manifested through thousands of
interwoven linen threads that bind and pierce scarred ceramic bodies.
Existing as bound forms, they emulate the feeling of bodies being
overpowered and contained.


There is the raging violence that exists beneath this hushed and latent spectacle, harboring a relationship most definitely turbulent. The two materials attract and repel each other, they need each other to exist in this dark co-dependency resulting in their brutality being exposed. What happens to the body when it is forced to become a vessel for trauma? In what ways do we physically carry pain? How is the self altered afterwards?

 

 

Unraveling comprises of a series of 7 different installations of various scales. The largest piece of roughly 5 ft high hangs from the ceiling, while another installation includes 30 vessels interconnected with threads.

 


The Artists

 
 

Kat Howard is an artist who works primarily with fiber and natural materials in large scale installations. She earned a BA in Creative Writing and Art History from Brandeis University in 2006, and worked at the Whitney Museum of American Art as their first Manager of Interactive Media until 2010, when she left the museum world to pursue two MFAs contingently in Studio Art: Book & Paper Art and Creative Writing: Poetry, which she received from Mills College in 2013. She has been featured in DesignSponge, Houzz, Architectural Digest and Chronogram.

Kat creates visual art that uses abstraction, the innate language of texture, and the repulsion/attraction of touch to interrogate her own identity as a survivor of abuse and sexual violence. Repetition and labor are vital aspects to the work; through which the anxiety of longing for touch is palpable. The fevered precision in her art, acts as an echo of the madness in the mind that comes to claim the body when it is a victim of trauma. Looking in from the outside, the control is invisible and can only be witnessed upon closer inspection in nearly transparent threads, thousands of knots and haunting appendages.

Kat lives in Kingston, NY.

kat-howard.com
@kat_howard

Jerome and Benedicte Leclere are ceramicists who create handmade ceramic ware with a minimalistic approach and timeless appeal. Both born in France, they moved to North America in 2008 to pursue their former careers in advertising, music and production. After working in Vancouver, Toronto and NYC, they left the industry after over a decade to recenter their life around values more meaningful to them.

They now own and operate their studio L'Impatience in a 3000 sqft space in Kingston, NY. Their pieces are sold in over a hundred stores across the country. They have collaborated on dinnerware pieces with Food52, The Maker Hotel, Wildflower Farms Auberge Resorts and bespoke vases with Sunrise Ruffalo. With a sharp eye for design and simple lines that tell a story, their work carries a sense of timelessness with subtle details, proof of the meticulous care and obsessive perfectionism that goes into each piece.

limpatience.com
@limpatience.ceramics

 

 

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