Katherine Van Drie is a multi-media artist whose works encompass, among other things, textiles, ceramics and sculpture. Katherine’s work explores questions about identity, domesticity, and material consumption, and how these are subsequently reflected in our culture and the spaces we inhabit.
Katherine’s Auxilium Persolutum, (Paid Help) series, looks at the complex interrelationship between individuals, drugs, the availability of healthcare, and the pharmaceutical industry.
I’ve Been Told, explores how the multi-billion dollar diet industry has affected the way we define and perceive ourselves. Her artwork considers the struggle to reach unattainable, homogenous, culture-driven goals of lifestyle, health and beauty that have resulted in increased stress, depression and a rise in mental illnesses including eating disorders.
Katherine’s latest body of work, Intimate Distortions, draws inspiration from the natural world and considers our dwelling within it. This work lives in a complex space between nature and culture – a place of hybridity that indicates something evolved and ‘natural’, but also alludes to the historical, social, and cultural constructs that humans exist within.
Katherine completed her BFA at Indiana University Northwest, and, as a winner of two purchase awards she has pieces in Indiana University’s permanent art collection. Some of the places she has exhibited at include the Bridgeport Art Center, 33 Contemporary Gallery, the Beverly Arts Center, Zhou B. Art Center in Chicago, and Echo Contemporary Art in Atlanta.
Katherine received her MFA in Visual Art, with a concentration in Sculpture, from Clemson University. She currently resides in South Carolina and teaches at the South Carolina School for the Arts, at Anderson University.