About
KAITLYNN WEBSTER is a multidisciplinary visual artist from California, USA, based in Galway, Ireland. She received her BA with Honours from California State University, Fresno and her MFA from the Burren College of Art/NUIG. She explores the way we construct reality and create meaning through ritual in her practice. Her work has been exhibited and published internationally. She currently serves on the board of directors for 126 Artist-Run Gallery in Galway, with a curatorial practice focused on deconstructing artificial hierarchies in fine arts.
STATEMENT
My work is an exploration of the personal rituals with which we construct our own realities and create meaning therein. I have created a meditative practice that utilizes a minimal range of materials and repetitive processes. I grew up in an extremely conservative religious household, and my rupture with the church caused not only a break in my family, but the loss of something around which I had built my entire identity and understanding of the world. Despite having left behind the severe piety of my youth, I found myself gravitating towards monasteries and chapels, kneeling before altars and lighting candles, participating in religious traditions that are not and never were mine, but which lend themselves to reflection. Concurrently, I fell in love with art in the bronze foundry, losing myself in the rituals involved in lost-wax casting. My entire practice focused on casting bronze and glass, until I moved to Ireland. In the heart of the Burren, without easy access to a foundry or glass kilns, I was forced to reimagine my practice. In this new, remote environment, devoid of many of the external stimuli to which I was accustomed, I began to focus on the soothing repetitive elements of each day. My enduring fascination with sacred ritualistic spaces, combined with the discovery of the connection between the new rituals of my life and the rituals I loved so much about bronze and glass casting brought me to my current artistic practice, which centers around repetitive mark-making and casting and carving plaster cylinders.
My work is an exploration of the personal rituals with which we construct our own realities and create meaning therein. I have created a meditative practice that utilizes a minimal range of materials and repetitive processes. I grew up in an extremely conservative religious household, and my rupture with the church caused not only a break in my family, but the loss of something around which I had built my entire identity and understanding of the world. Despite having left behind the severe piety of my youth, I found myself gravitating towards monasteries and chapels, kneeling before altars and lighting candles, participating in religious traditions that are not and never were mine, but which lend themselves to reflection. Concurrently, I fell in love with art in the bronze foundry, losing myself in the rituals involved in lost-wax casting. My entire practice focused on casting bronze and glass, until I moved to Ireland. In the heart of the Burren, without easy access to a foundry or glass kilns, I was forced to reimagine my practice. In this new, remote environment, devoid of many of the external stimuli to which I was accustomed, I began to focus on the soothing repetitive elements of each day. My enduring fascination with sacred ritualistic spaces, combined with the discovery of the connection between the new rituals of my life and the rituals I loved so much about bronze and glass casting brought me to my current artistic practice, which centers around repetitive mark-making and casting and carving plaster cylinders.