An Imagined Almanac: A Future For the Colorado Plateau
Kate Aitchison
January 30-February 20, 2025
Visiting Artist Talk - Wednesday, Jan 29 2025 3:30 P.M. - 4:30 P.M. Center for Southwest Studies 120, Lyceum
Exhibit Reception: January 30th, 4:30 P.M. - 6:00 P.M.
Gallery Hours, 10-4pm, Monday-Thursday and Select Saturdays, February 15, March 30 and April 12, 2025
An Imagined Almanac: A Future For the Colorado Plateau
Kate Aitchison
ARTIST STATEMENT
There is true magic in natural rhythms, the ebbs and flows of water, ecology, sand, wind, and time. As an artist, Aitchison aims to reflect the resilience of the planet we all call home and to highlight the fragility of a shifting balance as climate change and resource extraction tip us ever closer to environmental disaster. Human beings are participants in the landscape— integral, communal, and inventive. We bear the responsibility of acting as part of an ecological community, leaders in the quest to save our planet or followers in doomsday. Aitchison’s work celebrates the earth and its magnificence in order to inspire others to be a part of the land as it is a part of us.
Aitchison uses a two-part process of papermaking and printmaking to create her work, each step of which mirrors the complicated relationship of human beings with their landscapes. Beginning with the making of the substrates themselves (paper) she harvests fibers from invasive plant species along with recycled textiles to make sheets of multicolored paper imbued with place based specificity. The paper represents the physical act of "cleaning" up harmful plants and textile waste that negatively affect biodiversity and landscape resiliency. Within the paper she embeds stencils from previous prints along with other memorabilia to add physical interventions within them, representing how humans make permanent and unique marks on the landscape.
Once the paper is made, she uses a monotype process to create imagery from the landscapes themselves. Land forms intertwine with the materiality of the paper, creating images that speak to the sublime aspects of our anthropocenic age, the inevitability of human impacts in visible and invisible ways, and the incredible beauty of the natural and unnatural world around us.
website: kateaitchison.com
instagram: @kaitchison