Cover Art | Bloomer
Artist Statement
kltimbes@outlook.com
For this issue of Catalyst, the cover art is a reflection upon how dress, sexuality and gender expression relate to natural ecologies. The cover image captures two primary mediums, textiles and handmade paper, which speak to cycles, sustainable and traditional ways of making, and narratives of both objects and individuals that we often forget or silence. Lastly, as a revisitation of my undergraduate thesis, “Bloomer” represents a kind of resourcefulness I found myself chasing as I was removing myself from my studio and everything I knew to go work a seasonal job in Germany.
The image depicts an ink-drawn woman in a vest, standing on an industrial "worksman" bike, notoriously known for failing ergonomically. She holds the answer to the failed product, the same-sized handmade paper bike wheel. Brandished like a shield, but also a motive for action and transformation, it resembles a key for social, economic and political mobility. Bikes in Germany are an emblem of sustainable success while also being a historical door for social freedoms for women.
Breaking down the material makeup of this cover, the pink and gray handmade paper and woven bloomer pants call out westernized practices of capitalist consumption. The American corporate agenda unapologetically produces 67.5 million metric tons of paper and 16 millions tons of textile waste that continues to increase annually. Knowing the detriments to large-scale manufacturing on communities and the environment, I pushed myself to source fabric and paper locally. Collecting from institutions, communities, and people around me, I accumulated recycled paper from recycling bins at my college or hotel rooms in Germany, turning things I typically saw as waste into a valuable product.
The fabric and paper that I would strip to then weave together developed symbols of binaries - ones like clean or contaminated, strong or weak. I question their separate meanings, only to realize after searching through grays that one can’t exist without the other. Weaving calls to histories of craft and their misconceptions and belonging in the art world of imperialistic paintings curated in spaces facilitated by men. These two materials speak to not only interdisciplinary making but interdisciplinary thought. This journey of collecting materials allows me to read the narratives of my environment before I go through the process of making an object new again. It taught me a way of listening that says, ‘there’s always more’ to a story, relationship, language, work of art, and product deemed invaluable. I harvest recycled or unusable bed sheets from my grandmother, thrift stores, and now the hotel where I reside and work in southern Germany as a place that challenges me to find new paths to making art. I’ve always been interested in the way that garments define, classify, protect bodies, and break or uphold social norms, while also creating one of the most detrimental cycles to the planet. It weaves the thread of my making to a place where masculine and feminine convolute, a plethora of times throughout history. In this image, bloomers made from woven recycled sheets stand for this idea of listening to ourselves and our bodies, to silenced voices, to earth’s ecological changes, and o both the quiet and loud systems around us.
Artist Bio
Kate Timbes is an interdisciplinary artist based in South Carolina, investigating and abstracting collected industrial, human-made, and natural materials, questioning their narratives and functions. Working primarily in painting, video, and sculpture, she weaves mediums together, carrying objects, paintings, seeds, weavings, and sculptural handmade paper through physical, emotional, and digital landscapes. Timbes contemplates sourcing of resources, rethinking use via revitalization as an individual effort to engage in curious, creative, and ecological practices.
Timbes has shown various works around South Carolina’s upstate, exhibiting at Wofford College, Greenville-Spartanburg Airport, and the Spartanburg Public Library. She has a range of public artworks in South Carolina and Copenhagen (Denmark) and is involved in the Tri-State Sculptors Association.