Katie Vota
Continuing Studies Instructor
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Bio
Katie Vota (she/they) is a Chicago-based artist and educator seeking to (re)evaluate our relationships to materiality, community, and environment through the medium of tapestry re-imagined in the digital age. Via collecting cast-offs and scavenging colors from nature, she transforms materials to create wholes from smaller parts, finding softness in many forms, textures, colors, and patterns based in cloth. She received a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2010 and a Studio MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2015.
Personal Statement
Katie Vota’s work utilizes pattern-based tapestry as a drawing medium to map the connection between Indigo (a living color) and water as a living entity. The woven wave-forms and seascapes are both real and imagined—the beating of the loom akin to the ebb/flow of the tides. In drafting weaving patterns, she creates her own waves and ripples, and this deep focus on pattern is akin to larger observations of the sun sparking off the water, or the moon reflecting its face. She juxtaposes the beautiful idealization of these images with the living reality of our polluted water systems.
Awards
US Student Fulbright - Peru 2011
Exhibitions
Vota has exhibited in numerous solo and juried exhibitions, at venues including Threewalls (Chicago), Mu Gallery (Chicago), Pratt MPW School of Art Gallery (Utica, NY), The Krasl Art Center (St. Joseph, MI), The Indianapolis Art Center (Indianapolis), and Ignition Projects (Chicago). She is a Lenore Tawney Foundation Scholar, a Chicago DCASE grantee, and has participated in residencies such as Praxis Fiber Workshop Digital Weaving Lab, Corner Gallery’s Individual Artist Residency, CAC Field Work Residency, Chicago Art Department’s “On Mending” think tank, and Crosshatch (formerly the Institute for Sustainable Art and Natural Design) in Traverse City, MI.