Katherine Rutecki

Cloud

Cloud Extension is a long white cloud, spread low across the horizon, comprised of birds. Blackbirds have an important place in many different mythologies around the world, they often represent a transition between worlds, perhaps because they sing both day and into the night and spend much of their time on the ground. They represent shift between spaces: between day and night, between land and sky, between heaven and hell. Cloud Extension is made in a complicated glass-casting technique called pate de verre, in a press-mould, the result is a semi-transparent thin glass relief sculpture with bird imagery on one side and rolling hills on the other, the thick and thin transitions of the glass grains have the density of gathered precipitation, allowing light to filter through between bodies and gaps, like a cloud.

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Katherine Rutecki, Cloud Extension, Pate-de-verre, stone, 102x18x43cm, 2018

feat: Jon Witzky, Wedding Party, Oil on Canvas, 84”x120”, 2017

Fortress

Fortified by nipple spikes, the Fortress represents the body, as the figure of the Virgin Mary fills the cathedral in Jan van Eyck’s panel Madonna in the Church, indicating her body as the house of God and the temple of Christ; the fortress is both architecture for the body and is the body, a space for the mind to fill. ̌

Katherine Rutecki, Crystal Fortress, lost wax cast crystal, 33x33x66cm, 2017

Katherine Rutecki, Fortress Drawing, no. 1, sumi ink on paper, 46x231cm, 2017

Katherine Rutecki, Iron Fortress, cast iron, 43x43x185cm, 2018

Katherine Rutecki, Fortress Drawing no. 2, sumi ink on paper, 86x211cm, 2018

Katherine Rutecki, Pristine Fortress, lost wax cast crystal, 92x48x38cm, 2018

Katherine Rutecki, Pristine Fortress, lost wax cast crystal, 92x48x38cm, 2018 (detail)

Katherine Rutecki, Pristine Fortress, lost wax cast crystal, 92x48x38cm, 2018

Katherine Rutecki, Fortress Drawing no. 3, sumi ink on paper, 86x163cm, 2018

Katherine Rutecki, Fortress Drawing no. 4, sumi ink on paper, 86x153cm, 2018

Box of Birds

A hypertrophy of birds, an amassing multitude of bodies, held forcibly and condensed down into a cube by unknown forces. The compressed, sunken, hard, inescapable feeling of heartache, that fills and bears down, and pulls from the inside, suspended within your chest, big and hard and heavy. The bodies of the birds swell out and the cosmic antimatter crush it back in, the heart has no room and each beat is strained and pained. The birds are silent, their sounds muted by the nothingness which condemns them.

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Katherine Rutecki, Box of Birds, bronze, 30x30x30cm, 2018

Trifold Screen

Trifold Screen is a portrait of myself and my relationship with my daughter, who I was apart from in the first half of 2018. Between 2015 and 2018 I collected drawings I made of body parts, of birds and flowers which symbolize body parts or events, and of drawings by my daughter. The eyes of my self portrait figures line up with the eyes of the American Swallow and that of the New Zealand Piwakawaka, representing my two selves in the United States and in New Zealand, the physical distance, the gap, between my daughter and I.

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Katherine Rutecki, Trifold Screen, Mixed media on paper, steel, Plexiglas, with drawing inclusions by Frankie June Jacomb (daughter), 140x30x185cm, 2015-2017

Katherine Rutecki, Trifold Screen, Mixed media on paper, steel, Plexiglas, with drawing inclusions by Frankie June Jacomb (daughter), 140x30x185cm, 2015-2017 (detail)

Motherforms

These forms with life castings of my own nipples represent the private moments of motherhood and the duality of the mother as both sexual being and nurturer of children. Motherhood is comprised of private moments and affected by the public sphere. My work is a celebration of everyday life as a mother, parenting is repetitive and gross, beautiful and a constant source of amazement. The dividing forms represent a division of self, the division of a mother’s life before and after babies and the struggle to retain self‐identity throughout; also physically, the division of child from mother’s body and post birth attachment. The forms swell and grow out of the wall, they absorb light and colour shift throughout the day, and even seem awake at night, like icons they cast a benevolence in to the room.

(selected images)

Katherine Rutecki, Pink Double Bubble, blown and hot cast Erbium glass, mirror, birchwood ply, 53x10x30cm, 2016 (detail)

Katherine Rutecki, Pink Double Bubble, blown and hot cast Erbium glass, mirror, birchwood ply, 53x10x30cm, 2016

Katherine Rutecki, Green Double Bubble no. 1, blown and hot cast Uranium lagoon glass, mirror, birchwood ply, 330x10x36cm, 2016 (detail)

Katherine Rutecki, Green Double Bubble no. 1, blown and hot cast Uranium lagoon glass, mirror, birchwood ply, 330x10x36cm, 2016

Katherine Rutecki, Green Double Bubble no. 2, blown and hot cast Uranium lagoon glass, mirror, birchwood ply, 330x10x36cm, 2016 (detail)

Katherine Rutecki, Green Double Bubble no. 2, blown and hot cast Uranium lagoon glass, mirror, birchwood ply, 330x10x36cm, 2016

Katherine Rutecki, Egg, blown and hot cast Uranium lagoon glass, 38x25x25cm, 2016

Katherine Rutecki, Island House, sumi ink on paper, 2016

Katherine Rutecki, Dip, sumi ink on paper, 2016

Katherine Rutecki, Sag, sumi ink on paper, 2016

Katherine Rutecki, Loop, sumi ink on paper, 2016

Katherine Rutecki, Blue Bubble, blown and hot cast cobalt glass, mirror, birchwood ply, 13x10x15cm, 2017

Katherine Rutecki, Blue Double Bubble, blown and hot cast cobalt glass, mirror, birchwood ply, 20x10x18cm, 2017

______Work

“_______ work” is a six-hour endurance performance drawing and installation I executed at the Vergette Gallery, Southern Illinois University in the fall of 2016. The installation included a paper I patch-worked together from tracing paper and wheat paste to the specific dimensions of the far wall of the gallery, 10 x 13 feet, three blown glass sculptures mounted to the walls of the gallery, and an armchair.