About

Katharine Buckley, book artist and printer

Growing up in the South and being steeped in a place of duality and complexity has informed my artistic work greatly. I grew up privy to the profoundly rich culture and beautiful landscape of the deep South. At the same time, I was exposed to the fraught history and horrors of the region. Both of these aspects of the South, the good and bad, contribute to the truth of the Southern experience. To deny one of these realities in an effort to speak about the other is ultimately a disservice to the South. Rather than rebuke either of those realities as a form of self-preservation, I have chosen to embrace them both. My identity as a Southerner is built on a foundation of complexity and honesty, informed by dueling feelings of pride and shame. I want to hold multiple truths in my hands, turn them over and over, examine them closely, and sit with them. This approach informs my work and my interest in history, the ways in which history gets told, and how cultural influences impact history.

With my work, I recontextualize original source material and subject matter, and I present it in a way that prompts the view to reconsider the prevailing narrative or reexamine their beliefs or knowledge. My working process is very research-driven. I pull from archival material to use as inspiration or as text and imagery in my work. By working closely with source material, I can gain a deeper level of intimacy with the subject, and by incorporating it into my work, I can prompt the viewer to have those same feelings. Often, I will respond to the source material by manipulation or adding editorial commentary. My prominent interest in subject matter is Southern history, culture, and identity. Additionally, my work examines other subjects as they strike my research fancy, and I am particularly interested in domesticity and placemaking as other aspects of culture and identity. 

By using print and books as my medium, I can directly reference the historical subjects of my work and use a form that is well-situated for historical examination. There’s a richness added to my work by using similar printing processes or binding structures to what was used to create the original source material I am referencing in my work. When designing my work, I take in the historical context and incorporate that into my planning and design. Additionally, with printing, I am able to create democratic multiples and increase the distribution of my work. Because printmaking allows for creating an edition of work, I can make multiples of my prints and books with ease. I prefer working in editions since most of my work focuses on challenging widely-accepted beliefs, thus it is important to me to make my work accessible for a wider audience.