12w Two Runner Pots, Katherine Westphal, heat transfer photo copy collage drawing, 22" x 30", 1993, $2,400
15W Top Dog, Katherine Westphal, heat transfer on tapas bark cloth, 58" x 42", 1991, $4,500
42w Ritual, Katherine Westphal, natural and synthetic raffia, 12" x 7" x 7", 1999, $3,000
18kw Geisha, Geisha, Katherine Westphal, gourd, heat transfer on rice paper, laminated , 11" x 10.5" x 10.5", 1989, $1,500
41kw NARA, Katherine Westphal, gourd, heat transfer on rice paper, laminated , 10" x 13" x 13", 1996, $3,000 Selected permanent collections and exhibition venues:
Museum of Arts and Design, New York, New York; Trondheim Museum, Norway; Renwick Gallery, at the National Museum of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.; Musée des Arts Decoratifs, Lausanne, Switzerland; San Francisco Craft and Folk Art Museum, California; Museum at the Rhode Island School of Design, Providence (Ties That Bind; Fiber Art by Ed Rossbach and Katherine Westphal from the Daphne Farago Collection - traveling exhibition); American Craft Museum, New York, New York ; de Young Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, California (Saxe Collection); Hauberg Collection, Seattle, Washington; Bellevue Arts Museum, Washington (Intertwined: Contemporary Baskets from the Sara and David Lieberman Collection).
Award: Fellow: American Craft Council; Gold Medal: American Craft Council Keynote Address: World Crafts Council Conference, 1980.
Books: Chinese Dragons and Other Creatures: Chinese embroideries of the Ch'ing Dynasty, Lancaster-Miller Publishers, 1979; Katherine Westphal: Artist and Professor, Fiber Arts Oral History Series, University of California, Berkeley, California, Interview conducted by Harriet Nathan in 1984, published 1988. The Surface Designer's Art, Introduction by Katherine Westphal, Lark Books, Asheville, NC, 1993.
Statement:
I want to become a link in that long chain of human activity, the patterning of cloth on any surface available. I have learned from many cultures and pay homage to them. My work is pretty much autobiographical and narrative. It records my travel – anything I see or experience can pop out in my work, the connection being most often intuitive. I draw constantly in museums and, because life is so speeded up, I record with a camera as well as a sketchbook.
My baskets build one stitch at a time – color, shape, image, idea – in a spiral pattern, a growth form. Each basket has a name – and an identity, and each basket is part of a series. The ideas can stem from nature, art, or from the chance remark of a friend. My baskets are not narrative or representational; they are my emotional reaction to a place, event or object.
Katherine Westphal
