Kate Rivers
Gallery Affiliations: Matthews Gallery, Joseph Gierek Fine Art
Region: West
Website: http://www.kateriversart.com
City / State: Santa Fe, NM
My work is abstract, focused on color and texture. All the work
is structurally dense, complex, and layered—a metaphor for the
complexity of obsession. Collage is the fundamental medium.
Frequently, the collage is combined with oil stick, paint, and
machine- and hand-stitching. Scale is extremely important. While
many pieces are small, my goal is to construct mural-size works
created from either books or merchandise tags. The quantity of
the materials used in the production of a piece is a statement of
the entanglement of collecting and obsession.
I am passionate about my collage media, choosing materials that
are obsolete yet precious, or that represent something that can
seem valuable at one moment and become insignificant later:
books, for example, are collected, rarely read, and usually end
up discarded. I find them at estate sales and Goodwill. Clothing
tags are especially seductive, because they are well designed and
engage the need to buy.