Interview with Artist Kat King

Kat King's story takes from a limitless palette of objects, both personal and found, and enters them into the world of books! In my interview with this fascinating and multi-media artist, I became very aware of how her research, inspirations and aspirations are hidden and detailed within the complexities of her books. It's a wonderful artistic hybrid of sculpture, collage and painting that's dreamy and raw.

Let's give you a taste of who is Kat King!....

What have you been up to lately? I'm on my way to become an art teacher. I was struggling with figuring out what I wanted to do with my life and when I graduated with my BFA [in 2012] - it was very overwhelming. I was in a retail-esque job not long ago and I didn't want to be there forever so I left. I didn't want to be unhappy and it wasn't fulfilling. I've been working everything in line to be an art teacher.

What drives you to teach? When I was in elementary school I always looked forward to art class. I had the best teacher who would encourage and help us to grow and experiment with wacky projects that you wouldn't have thought of. When she passed away something just clicked - I needed to do art forever. When someone impacts your life and they're just.. gone, you step back and think "wow, if I didn't have this teacher, I wouldn't have been so impacted by art." And I really want to do that, to have that impact on someone else. My mom's also an artist, which helps from the home aspect.

How do you describe your style of work? From what I hear a lot and after stepping back, my work is really dark, and comes off as creepy. People might get turned off but I think if you dive deeper into it, really look and try to get past that, there are a lot of meaningful things in there.

Can you take us through your process? I start by slicing with a box cutter, the middle part of a page and then rip chunks of pages off. After I rip the pages I'll put glue on all three sides, let it set. Later, after like a day, I take a box cutter again and slice either in the middle or just the first page to open it up.  But it's gotten harder and really strenuous causing lots of wear and tear on my hands, and I feel like I'm starting to get arthritis, so sometimes I get very discouraged and I don't want to rip up any new books. I try and power through tearing up multiple books at one time so that if I want to start another idea in the middle of something else, I can just do it then.

Kat also mentions that her ideas are either sketched out and pre-planned or come intuitively, whether she's listening to a song, remembering a dream, borrowing someone else's story (as to create portrait-like pieces) or more simply by picking a color she wants to use at the moment. Check out this lyric that inspired one of her books: "Oh please come hold me, said the woman all covered in leaves. He's come again, the man with the roses that grow from his hands." China White by He is Legend.

What research do you do? I have a lot of art books that I revisit. My favorite is "Book Arts" that has about 1,000 mixed media books. There's nothing in there that's the exact replica of what that I'm doing, but it's nice to see the other ways people have used books. Even though a lot of the information I see is not transferred into my work, it just helps me to think outside of the box and create chain reactions to thoughts and ideas. I can relate to artist Joseph Cornell's visuals and how he collages different objects into a box-like space.

Kat and I also talked about Louise Bourgeois and her spiders. Although Kat might not use them for the same reasons as Bourgeois does to reference her mother, Kat similarly ties family with spiders in her books. A lot of my books have "daddy long legs "all over them that I can trace to issues that I've had with my father.

Would you consider your work as somewhat "spiritual?" It could be considered spiritual in that it's me trying to heal myself through creating art. It started off as wanting to vent and talk to someone but couldn't' fit the words out the way that I felt them so they just started coming out as art. It relieves that tension that gets bottled up. It's ironic, though, that when I tear up the pages it hurts. I'm transferring something that had once hurt me, feeling pain while I work, and making it into something tangible. So, yeah, it becomes a healing process.


What's the most fun out of making your work? Being able to use whatever I want to use, it's so free. I also really like seeing finished product with proper lighting to see all the shadows, depth and details that pop out. I pay attention to details a lot. There are things that get overlook unless you get close and personal, which I think everyone should do with art - get super close to grasp a full appreciation for it.

What's a dream project of yours? I would go to Yale or Harvard's library where they have huge, beautiful old, expensive books and I would rip them up. Most people who love books hate me, because they're like why would you rip that up, that's such a good book? It baffles them, but I wouldn't work with first editions or originals. I have an appreciation for books too. I have a bunch that I love that I would never rip up. But if I had two of them, I would rip it up.

Also, It would be a dream if I could be an art teacher by day and super sleek gallery owner by night. It's hard because their two separate worlds, but I would love to be a part of both of them.


Where I met the artist: Kat and I went to school and graduated from Florida International University, sharing a BFA show in the Fall of 2012 at the Frost Art Museum. I've "stalked" her since because her work is divine! Check out her website: www.katkingarts.com