Check out Katherine Rhodes Fields’s Artwork

Today we’d like to introduce you to Katherine Rhodes Fields.

Katherine Rhodes, we’d love to hear your story and how you got to where you are today both personally and as an artist.
I was born and raised in the home state of Elvis, the home of Faulkner’s acceptable run-on-sentence, a state of idiosyncrasies, the state of Mississippi. I was also born the fourth of five children, into a family where education, the arts, manners and wearing pantyhose to church were prioritized (not always in that order). As a child, during visits with my Grandmother, an artist and art educator in the Vicksburg public schools, I learned how to carve images to print, usually a potato or styrofoam meat tray, paint with watercolor and draw from observation. From time to time she allowed to load up the film and use her camera. I poured over books that were well above my reading level just to see the images and eventually found connecting points with the image and the words. I feel that by and large all of these personal historical factors have in one way or another, informed my practice, observations and outcomes that are noticeable in my art.

As an extension of this type of rearing and exposure to a diverse and rich culture my home state offered to me, my creative and academic pursuits were encouraged throughout my life, leading to awards, scholarships, Art School in Glasgow Scotland, a bachelor’s degree from the University of the South (commonly known as Sewanee) and a double major in Fine Art and History (European), two masters degrees, MFA in Printmaking and MA TESL from the University of Mississippi (i.e. Ole Miss), academic and journal publications, national and international exhibitions, collaborations, tv specials, national and international workshops, independent film festivals juries, guest speaker presentations, printing broadsheets for writers (a pulitzer prize winning author once), invitations for international art colonies and my art being acquired into multiple private, public and museum collections both in the United States and abroad.

Currently, I am a working artist, Professor and Chair for the Division of Art and Art History in the Center of Excellence for the Visual and Performing Arts at Houston Community College in addition to my volunteer work as President of PrintMatters, a 501c3 Houston based Arts non-profit.

We’d love to hear more about your art. What do you do you do and why and what do you hope others will take away from your work?
The primary medias I use in my work are printmaking, drawing, and photographic processes (digital and analog). Observations from growing up in the religious and complex rural south, leaving the region and eventually the country, as well as my personal journey through academia and the challenges of the mundane have influenced and eventually manifested into the images and chosen processes in my art work.

These influences, observed in my bodies of prints, drawings and photographs, cover a wide berth of conceptual research. Some series derive from my viewpoint as a woman on certain topics such as perceptions of beauty, ideal physicality, women as consumables and the defenses women wear or implement in order to survive or thrive. I also explore how the influences of history and its impact on our current world by creating conceptual connection points in my work. Examining how our shared world history, philosophies and images throughout time can be revisited, visually juxtaposed and eventually contemporized, is also a means of inspiration to my work. I have been working on my plague doctor series for over thirteen years and I enjoy revisiting the concept between other ideas and projects. These are the images I am sharing in this interview.

Have things improved for artists? What should cities do to empower artists?
I believe that the challenges most artists face is having an engaged and educated audience as well as acquiring and implementing new technologies, such as 3-D printing, VR, etc. in order to explore how it can be integrated into our established art practices. I enjoy being challenged by process and learning new ways to approach a concept, so I believe that it by having easy access to burgeoning technologies for artists would help support that creative and explorative endeavor.

Do you have any events or exhibitions coming up? Where would one go to see more of your work? How can people support you and your artwork?
Currently, I am not carried by a commercial gallery and have no scheduled exhibits in the Houston area. However, people can see my work in person or on the web and support my work the following ways:
By appointment to see work at my studio. Going to and sharing my website: http://www.katherine-rhodes-fields.com. Not local? One can visit or access my work in the following collections:

Museum of Tetovo Region (Muzej na tetovskiot kraj), Tetovo Macedonia
SNAP Society of Northern Alberta Printmakers
Bernard A. Zuckerman Museum of Art, Kennesaw, Georgia, USA
Tourist Association Gallery of Kralejvo, Kralejvo Serbia
City Gallery, Visegrad, Republic Srpska, Bosnia and Herzegovinia
Permanent Collection Christchurch Polytechnic Institute of Technology, Christchurch, New Zealand
Proyecto’ Ace Print Collection, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Richard F. Brush Art Gallery, St. Lawerence University, Canton, New York, USA
University of Colorado Special Collection, Boulder, Colorado, USA
The Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson, Mississippi, USA
The William D. Merwin Collection of Contemporary Art, St. Louis, Missouri, USA
St. Louis Community College at Wildwood, Wildwood, Missouri, USA
Amity Art Foundation Print Collection, Woodbridge, Connecticut, USA
The University of the South Archives, Sewanee, Tennessee, USA

Contact Info:

• Website: http://www.katherine-rhodes-fields.com
• Email: katherinerhodesfield@mac.com
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KatherineRhodesFields

Image Credit:
Adan Herrera

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