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 bringing art, in all its forms, to the community,
 and bringing the community, in all its diversity
to the arts in Salem, Massachusetts

Katie Hutchison

http://www.katiehutchison.com/

 

Member profile details

Membership level
Artist Individual - Volunteer
First Name
Katie
Last name
Hutchison
 

Personal information

 

Artist Info

Medium / Media
  • Photography
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Artist Bio or Résumé
Found objects fascinate me. As a child on Block Island I collected a pocketful of grey periwinkle shells and driftwood fragments, brought them back to our vacation rental and sat in the driveway with a bottle of glue arranging the specimens from tiniest to less tiny on a three-inch piece of silvered driftwood. It was complete bliss.

I didn’t think about it at the time, but those shells had been home to the snails that occupied them and by intervening to arrange the shells relative to each other and on a site of sorts, I was already placemaking.

I took that interest in order, composition, and detail with me to the Rhode Island School of Design where I studied architecture and discovered the craft of black and white photography. After graduating and while working in architecture, I continued to refine my black and white skills at continuing education venues, striving to portray the rich tonal range possible with the zone system. The tone-on-tone gray color palette of the periwinkle shell driftwood assemblage continued to enchant.

Along the way I experimented with other forms of photography: Polaroid transfers, photo polymer etching, the Holga toy camera and pinhole photography. I found these more improvisational processes liberating compared with the technically exacting black and white techniques I had been pursuing. They freed me to focus again on the delight of the found moment, to discover the interplay of light on details and frame them into compositions which create their own order. The snails were back; the spontaneity of creating trumped over-thinking.

I entered the world of digital color photography a bit reluctantly. At first I gravitated toward mostly single-color compositions: grey-on-grey, white-on-white. The charms of black and white photography were hard to escape. Then I took the plunge and started to see color in a language of contrasts, not unlike the contrasts of black and white. I began to capture moody color and more stark color. The ability to see nearly instantly on the LCD whether a particular digital composition is successful became intoxicating. Reframing or searching anew continues to propel me.

Today, I imagine it would be fun to try my snail assemblage with colored snail shells on a piece of sea glass. Now, if only I could find some.
Artist Statement
Most of my work focuses on place. As a residential architect who grew up in and around New England and who lives here today, New England’s natural and built environment is, in many ways, as much a part of me as my family and friends. My visual lexicon was created sailing these shores, hiking these trails, walking these streets, and living within these mostly antique or aging walls. I have an eye for light and shadow cast on details within our everyday environments. The camera allows me to share the world I see, and for that I’m grateful.
 
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