Today we’d like to introduce you to Katie Marshall.
Katie, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
I am an artist and a recent MFA graduate of Cal State Long Beach – I work primarily in painting, drawing, and collage. When I started the program three years ago, I would have never thought of myself as a ‘real’ artist, let alone be where I am today and making the work I’m making.
I grew up in a small town in the Bay Area that has strong roots in the counterculture, environmentalism, and the hippie movement. I was exposed to a lot of community-based art and art in school growing up and was very lucky to have had inspiring and free-thinking art teachers that I remember to this day. My hometown is extremely hilly, and I have so many memories based in those hills—driving and meandering around at night as a teenager, always dreading my walk home as a kid. I think the hills and ridges had a huge impact on my visual sensibilities—I love arches and big curving lines, and working spatially. In high school I really fell in love with art and design—I loved my rock and roll album covers, Soviet propaganda posters, and all of the Sixties history and visual culture that saturates the Bay Area. I had an amazing high school art teacher. In class, we were encouraged to pursue our own interests and projects, we could listen to music, and really just had a lot of freedom to make our own space. An older friend introduced me to screen printing from stencils, and I remember the incredible feeling of excitement, intimacy, and possibility that came with this love of creativity and finding others who shared it.
In college, I studied Russian literature, though I always stayed connected to art in various ways. But since I had no degree in it and somewhat piecemeal formal training, I never thought it was something I could do seriously. I got a job in Moscow after college with an educational non-profit and ended up working as a translator for several years. My time in Russia was where the green light went off that art was something I could do with or without a degree—there is extremely little institutional support for contemporary artists in Russia, but there was so much creative energy, thirst, and resourcefulness among my friends there. Basically, what I learned is that art is just something you are just compelled to do, and you have to work relentlessly at it to make things happen and find your way. You make the work, collaborate with friends, make your own spaces to show it, take classes, teach yourself—so that is what I did really intently for four years before graduate school. As an MFA student, I started with a lot of intellect, intuition, and resourcefulness but not much training at a school that has an excellent and in some ways very traditional and hardcore studio program. I flung myself into learning as much as I could as fast and as best as I could, and in the end I have been completely stunned with what I’ve learned, made, and shown, and every artist I’ve met along the way, all the incredible work I’ve been exposed to. I feel lucky that I ended up so close to Los Angeles and had such a big and inspiring community of artists at school.
Has it been a smooth road?
It has been a very strange road, though one I feel incredibly lucky and fortunate to take—I never thought I’d go back to school, certainly not for art. But I became interested in community arts teaching, particularly within the prison system, which was where I first came to learn that it would be important to have serious credentials. A mentor of mine who is a great printmaker and community arts teacher who teaches in the prison system, as well as juvenile hall, told me to always follow art as a way of being in the world—I think she’s completely right. Art has led me to so many things, including teaching. And for the past three years, getting to structure my life around the thing I truly love, and which I believe, as a human activity, holds great cosmic significance and mystery, is worth all the struggle, anxiety, failure, self-doubt, and immense ups and downs that come with the territory. There’s a lot that’s wrong with the art world, and a lot that may seem frivolous or self-indulgent about being an artist, but I strongly and unabashedly believe that as a sum total Art is an enduring expression of the human heart, spirit, and imagination, a way of sitting with forces beyond our comprehension. When I really connect with a work of art or feel moved by it, I feel utterly grateful for its existence and for the fact that someone made it.
So, as you know, we’re impressed with Katie Marshall Studio – tell our readers more, for example what you’re most proud of and what sets you apart from others.
I make colorful large-scale mixed media works that evoke my conflicting internal states and existential musings, often with a heavy dose of irony and self-deprecating humor. A lot of my work is inspired by long-distance road trips, most recently a trip to the Arizona Meteor Crater. I love painting, both historical and contemporary, and I especially love contemporary painters who hold fast to painting as their art form while pushing hard against its boundaries and making really beautiful, complex work in a field that is often said to be dead or irrelevant. My work is strongly in the spirit of painting—its sensuality, use of color, texture, material, shape, imagery, and expressiveness—though I often venture far from the traditional format with work that is installation-based and uses elements of collage, sculpture, and a wide range of materials. When I get my work to a place where everything is holding together in my mind and eyes like a precarious formation of acrobats—the subject matter, materials, colors, composition, and even titles—and looks just the way I want it to, that’s how I know it’s done.
For me, the creative act is one of resilience, defiance, love, and life force. Ultimately I hope to be really generous with viewers—I make work that is full of texture, color, and symbolism, with an often playful or cartoonish sensibility. I hope the humor, visual treatment, and elements of surprise and daring are what stay with the viewer; that it can transport them to a different headspace or evoke a sense of musicality or other associations with the world outside of ‘fine’ art.
What quality or characteristic do you feel is most important to your success?
As an artist, I’m extremely hard working, and as many artists will tell you, that is really the only way to see your work develop and to have breakthroughs. One of my best friends went through an MFA program at the same time as me and we often joke that being artists has made us incredibly boring—we’re in our studios for 12 hours a day. I’m quite introverted, so being alone in the studio feels really good and natural—I love it and having the space to experiment and be alone with my thoughts and materials. I’m also resourceful and really good at improvising and ultimately navigating my way out of what seems like a disaster—I think this stems a lot from hostessing and working in restaurants—and it’s an extremely important ingredient in who I am as an artist. Hold onto your punk romantic soul wherever and whenever you can, and keep going!
Contact Info:
- Website: cargocollective.com/yakatya
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: katiemarshallstudio
Image Credit:
Shelby Roberts
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