Technique Domestique Unique

 

Technique Domestique Unique

Handkerchief

Chicago Tangelo

Somethin' Growing Here

It Was Miami

Regrowth (All Is Not Lost)

Bedroom Garden

Feral Mothers

By Tom Wachunas 

“In this exhibition you will see materials like my family’s discarded pizza lids, vintage handkerchiefs, furniture, IKEA curtains, yarn, and other household materials…I explore the relationship between domestic materials and abstraction. These paintings push the boundaries of what a painting can be, while using everyday objects with joy, playfulness, and all the messy, raw layers of domestic life…”  - excerpt from the artist statement by Katie Davis

EXHIBIT: Raw Material – work by Katie Davis, at Massillon Museum STUDIO M, through July 14, 2024 / 121 Lincoln Way East, downtown Massillon / Thursday, Friday, Saturday 9:30 am – 5:00 pm, Sunday 2:00-5:00 pm / 330.833.4061

https://www.katiekdavis.com/    https://www.instagram.com/kdavisstudio/

 

   A few days after seeing this exhibit, I chanced upon this curious statement posted on Facebook: ”Art is not meant to match your curtains. It’s meant to speak to your soul.” A snarky, snide, and silly dictate if ever there was one. And needlessly dismissive. As if curtains (or pizza boxes or couches or laundry piles) can’t possibly be art.

   In her statement for this exhibit, Katie Davis wrote further that those “messy, raw layers of domestic life” embraced / implied in her art were born in the context of challenging stay-at-home motherhood. Her paintings/collages became a satisfying way of processing the endless demands of domestic labor. “These moments of revelry were pure abstraction, arrangement,” she muses, “and something that verged on design and madness.”

  Madness? Only of a sort. Maybe better to think of it as compelling wildness. There’s no morose insanity here. No hopeless or brooding darkness. Katie Davis invests her delightful accoutrements of domesticity with exquisite tactility, all suffused with bright, vibrant colors.

   I felt an ineffable presence of childlike songfulness. Rhythms and rhymes, delicate and bold, filling the air of a household now transported to an art gallery. In her ambitious installation work called “Somethin’ Growing Here,” Davis invites viewers to relax on the loveseat. It’s not just a piece of ordinary furniture. It’s a painting in itself.

   So go ahead and sit. Look out at all those tunes lining the gallery walls. Sing along with the pulsing, illuminated soul of an artist mother.