Tourist Magazine

TOURIST magazine: Hello Kate. How would you describe yourself and your art?
KATE STECIW: I would describe myself as a misanthropic humanist and I would say that I strive to create work that reflects and dissects a rapidly changing set of attitudes and aesthetics in an effort to expose formal elements within those schema that, for better or worse have changed our perceptions of the world.

Tm: Did you study art?
KS: I actually majored in Sociology in college but I did study art in graduate school (I have an MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago).

Tm: Your photographic style is very distinctive. How did it come about?
KS: I think my style evolved directly from working for years as a professional retoucher. Not only did that experience give me the tools that I use in most of my work but, it revealed to me a world of increasingly complicated alterations and manipulations at play in contemporary commercial imagery.

Tm: Which technology or materials do you work with?
KS: I work mostly with Photoshop but I am training on 3D rendering and animation tools as well.

How do you go about creating an image, is it a long process?
It depends on the image. Some images take a long time to create from conception to final output and others are more intuitive / gestural.

Tm: You also make videos, such as Mountains Obscured by Fog; is this separate from your photographs or do the different mediums inform each other?
I see my video work as a continuation of my photographic explorations in that they are both dealing with the ways in which our image-based culture experiences itself.

Mountains Obscured by Fog is a video of mountains taken by someone whose name I do not know obscured by digitally rendered fog – a reference to an increasingly immaterial experience of the world via television, the internet, video games, etc…

Tm: Where does inspiration lie?
KS: Antarctica, The internet, Entropy, The Art of the Weimar Republic, Running, Extreme Retouching, Whales and whaling, H.G. Wells, H.P. Lovecraft, Flowers, Death and Destruction, Geometry and early mathematics, String Theory, Bach, Beethoven and Brahms, The Maury Show/ “You are NOT the father!” Travel, Motion and movement in general (planes, trains and automobiles), Pennsylvania, New York and everything beyond and in between…

Tm: Where do you call home?
KS: Brooklyn, NY

Tm: How does your everyday surroundings there influence your work?
KS: As a retoucher, I spend a lot of my time in a small dark room…

Tm: Where are your favourite places to take pictures?
KS: I love to photograph in and around Bethlehem, PA (where my family lives) as well as in NYC. Oddly, a lot of my images start very simply and very close to home.

Tm: Some of your images would make beautiful textile prints, is this something you have considered?
KS: It’s funny you should ask! I have considered this and am currently working on a project that will be printed on rugs.

Tm: Excellent!
Your work is very graphic. Are there any artists or designers who are important to you?
KS: Josef Albers, Lucas Blalock, Joseph Beuys, Michelle Ceja, Adam Cruces, Otto Dix, Marcel Duchamp, Sam Falls, Parker Ito, Brian Khek, Sol LeWitt, Tom Moody, Jon Rafman, Ryder Ripps, Micah Schippa, JOGGING…

Tm: How has your work developed since you began? Has it changed?
KS: I think my work is becoming increasingly abstract and increasingly less “photographic” in the sense that more and more projects may not end up as photographic objects.

Tm: Tell us about any other projects you are working on!
KS: I am working on a website/image that one can never experience in its entirety – an image that reflects the limits of the internet and our immaterial experience of image culture. Here is a sneak peak! www.colossussssssss.com

Tm: And what are your plans for the future?
KS: I would like to continue to make art, get married, have a dog and maybe a kid. Truly.

katesteciw.com
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