Bio
Kathy Weaver explores areas of science and technology through robots and fantastic worlds. Utilizing fiber techniques and collage, Weaver’s airbrushes paintings on paper, stitching and burning the work. Her unusual designs often include robots, animals and nature forms. Trained as a painter, Weaver’s early work was of a political nature. She gravitated to the medium of fabric as a way to engage a larger audience to view the message of her works. An example of her early fiber work is a series of three quilts, “Guns Are Us” portraying handgun violence in Chicago, which is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Arts and Design in New York City. In the Aesop’s Fables series she uses the traditional painting medium on cradled boards.
Weaver exhibits nationally and internationally. She has received an Illinois Arts Council Grant, the Cathy Rasmussen Emerging Artist Memorial Award at Quilt National ’07, and juror’s award at the 2018 Evanston and Vicinity Biennial. Weaver had a major solo show at The Art Center in Highland Park, IL in June and July 2012. In 2015 she was chosen to represent the United States at the 15th International Tapestry Triennial in Poland. Also in 2015 Weaver exhibited at the Stockholm Supermarket Art Fair represented by Gallery on Armitage. She has had solo shows at the Olympia Center (Chicago), the Chicago State University, the Gordon Center for Integrative Science (University of Chicago) and Woman Made Gallery in Chicago. She exhibited in more than 100 group shows around the country including in New York, Washington DC, Miami, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. Recently, Weaver had a solo show at Visions Art Museum in San Diego, CA.
She has received many other awards and can be seen in various books and publications. She has been a repeat fellow at the Ragdale Foundation, the Brush Creek Foundation for the Arts, and the Hambidge Center for the Arts. Gallery 19, Chicago, Illinois, represents Weaver and has taken her work to SOFA Exposition, Chicago. Weaver was trained at the University of Cincinnati and received her M.A. in painting and art history from Bowling Green State University. She received a fellowship from the Banff Centre for the Arts in Banff, Alberta, Canada and studied batiking at the Narong Studios, Jogjakarta, Indonesia. She studied at the Institute for European Studies and at the Art Academy of Vienna and has traveled extensively in Asia, Europe, North and East Africa, South America and Cuba. Weaver has taught at Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts.
Contact
Artist Statement
Kathy Weaver’s latest paintings are a series of figures titled “Avatars”, gouache on handmade Twinrocker paper, 40” x 14”. The intent of the Avatar series is to focus attention on particular behaviors exhibited around us in this time of racial inequality, cultural upheaval, climate change, pandemic, and the deepening economic divide. Weaver uses the tall, narrow format to emphasize the corporality of the figure. These characters are ready to act, challenge, AND persevere. In true Avatar fashion, they possess the different emotional and behavioral qualities that humans project to the world. There is a crystallization of character through pattern design, intense color, and hard edges.In her world travels
Weaver was especially drawn to temple paintings, batik deigns, Persian miniatures and Japanese woodblock prints. From childhood on, she immersed herself in a world of comic books and pop culture. There the skill of the artist is demonstrated by emphasis on action, dynamic composition, and color. In Weaver’s work the detailed application of pattern draws people into the image. It is left to the viewer to examine the various behaviors the Avatars embody and then to identify with the avatar they choose. The Avatars are a more elaborate extension of ourselves.
