Kathryn Dunlevie

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Kathryn Dunlevie follow American

Lives in Palo Alto, California, United States

Projects/Portfolios

Women of Wonder

Introduction

WOMEN OF WONDER

Inspired by today’s hyper-abundance of visual information, I am treating imagery from disparate sources as transmutable raw material. Intermixing my own photographs with elements from popular as well as historical sources conjures up unsettling entities and strange scenarios. Relics from our communal pictorial archive are commingled with contemporary images, creating jumps through space and time and echoing the startling juxtapositions of contemporary visual culture.

The characters that emerge from this process find themselves in locales ranging from Rome's Fiumicino in ‘Touching Down' to Turkey's western Aegean coast in 'Hitchhiker's Guide to Kusadasi' - and in times ranging from WWI in ‘Escape From the Lab’ to the 1930’s in 'Marlowe’s Mistake’. 'Ostara’ and ‘Khidr’ harken back to ancient eras, while ‘Dr. Who’s Girlfriend’ has arrived from outside of time. ‘Our Lady of the Harbor’ has escaped pre-disaster Pompeii on a mission to contemporary Los Angeles, while the denizen of ‘Tipping Point’ floats above it all in a tent that has no floor, and apparently no gravity.

As diverse images converge and give rise to outlandish creatures and enigmatic situations, the "Women of Wonder" inspire us to go, unabashedly, wherever we like and to proceed, without constraint, as we choose.

Cover Versions

Introduction

COVER VERSIONS

I have always been intrigued by apparent inconsistencies in time and space, and by each individual’s shifting sense of reality. As I fracture and reassemble photographs to suggest the intrusion of alternate worlds, everyday images are transformed into compositions that hint at mysterious underlying structures and intangible extra dimensions.

Incorporating vintage record album covers into my process adds diverse textures and elements from popular culture, and even more importantly, provides a wide range of bizarre inspirational springboards.

Combining my photographs with the album covers takes me in unexpected directions. Relics from our communal visual archive are overlaid with contemporary images, creating jumps through space and time.

With each Cover Version I hope to suggest that separate dimensions have indeed collided.

Mistick Krewes

Introduction

MISTICK KREWES

In New Orleans in 1857 a newly formed secret society, the Mistick Krewe of Comus, began the tradition of celebrating Mardi Gras with a torch-lit procession of extravagant floats. My series, Mistick Krewes, is an homage to the rich jumble of that city’s overlapping heritages and the still perceptible aura of its tempestuous history. Since its founding in 1718, New Orleans’ cultural, political and natural landscapes have been continually invaded and eroded, bought and sold, enriched and transformed.

A visitor to New Orleans might pass through districts, buildings and gardens that exhibit the intertwining of centuries of Native American, Spanish, French, African and American influences. City streets are named for Greek muses, native tribes and 18th-century French nobility. Surrounding swamplands are swallowed by encroaching gulf waters. The atmosphere is charged with an air of mystery, a strange sense of desire, and a whiff of something hazily remembered, beckoning from just around the next corner. It is a place where history is revered, and where it can sometimes be ‘mistickally’ re-experienced.

In these works I am combining my photographs with images from the internet, print media and old photo albums. Adding layer upon layer, revisiting each composition again and again, I am working toward scenarios that compel even as they may mislead. Interweaving elements from nature, history and contemporary life conjures up landscapes populated with plants, wildlife, and otherworldly beings, evoking lost times and the Mardi Gras traditions that celebrate them.

Imaginarium

Introduction

IMAGINARIUM

In this series I am combining my photographs of zoos and natural history museums with those of contemporary urban settings. The resulting compositions suggest disruptions in space and time and the strange bedfellows these disruptions create.

As I add layer upon layer, interweaving elements from the natural world with images from artificial and constructed worlds, animal harbingers materialize in anomalous locations. Stunned to find themselves in alien surroundings – disoriented, mistrustful, even forlorn – they mutely proclaim their vulnerability to today’s threatened ecosystem.

Galleries

Hooks-Epstein Galleries, Houston, TX, United States
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Artists Gallery, San Francisco, CA, United States
San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art, San Jose, CA, United States

Publications

Kathryn Dunlevie: The Taxidermist's Imaginarium, Kathryn Dunlevie, Waverley Press, Palo Alto, 2018
Kathryn Dunlevie: Mistkick Krewes, Kathryn Dunlevie, Waverley Press, Palo Alto, 2016
Kathryn Dunlevie: Detectives of Fiction and Women of Mystery, Kathryn Dunlevie and Tom Leddy, Waverley Press, Palo Alto, 2014
Kathjryn Dunlevie: Syncopated Spaces, Kathryn Dunlevie, Cathy Kimball and Geri Hooks, Waverley Press, Palo Alto, 2012
Kathryn Dunlevie: Another Look, Kathryn Dunlevie, Glen Helfand, Don Snyder and Frederick Spratt, Waverley Press, Palo Alto, 2012
Kathryn Dunlevie: Cover Versions, Kathryn Dunlevie, Thomas Leddy and Gerald Brett, Waverley Press, Palo Alto, 2012
Kathryn Dunlevie: Syncopated Spaces, Kathryn Dunlevie, Cathy Kimball and Geri Hooks, Hooks-Epstein Galleries Press, Houston, Texas, 2010
Kathryn Dunlevie: Earthly Matters, Kathryn Dunlevie and Geri Hooks, Hooks-Epstein Galleries, Houston, Texas, 2008
Kathryn Dunlevie / Paintings, Frederick Spratt, Frederick Spratt Gallery Press, San Jose, CA, 2000

Statements

Artist Statement
I have always been intrigued by apparent inconsistencies in time and space, and by each individual’s unique and shifting sense of reality. In my photo-based mixed media works, everyday images are transformed into compositions that hint at invisible, underlying structures and imperceptible extra dimensions.

Process Statement
Inspired by today's super-abundance of visual information, I am treating imagery from disparate sources as transmutable raw material. Intermixing my photos with elements from popular as well as historical sources conjures up unsettling entities and raucous scenarios. Relics from our communal visual archive are commingled with contemporary images, tipped over, mashed up, and pushed back – creating jumps through space and time and echoing the startling juxtapositions of contemporary visual culture.

Biography

Kathryn Dunlevie is a photography-based artist whose work has been exhibited throughout the U.S. and internationally. Cathy Kimball, Executive Director of the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art, writes of Dunlevie’s work: “Through brilliant compositional detail and manipulation, she creates disconcerting, surprising, inexplicable spaces and scenarios.”

Dunlevie has always been intrigued by spatial and temporal inconsistencies, and by each individual’s particular and shifting sense of what is real. Fragmenting and reassembling photographs, she suggests the intrusion of alternate worlds.Born in Atlanta, Dunlevie lived in six different states by the time she was 12, and in Paraguay when she was 16. She has a B.A. in fine arts from Rice University and studied art history and film at the University of Paris, painting at California College of the Arts, and photography in Madrid. She lives in Palo Alto.

Dunlevie has received numerous awards and fellowships, including two Arts Council Silicon Valley Artist Laureate Fellowships, an International Photo Awards honorable mention and one of Saatchi Art’s BEST of 2014 awards. Her work has been exhibited at FotoFest International in Houston since 2002, at the Pingyao International Photography Festival in China, at Studio Thomas Kellner in Germany, in the United States Art in Embassies Program in Moscow, at Gallery TPW in Toronto and in the US at San Francisco Camerawork, the Southeast Museum of Photography, Stanford University and the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art.

Her work has been reviewed in Spain’s La Fotografia Actual, Korea’s photo +, Germany’s Profifoto, and England’s Saatchi Online Spotlight, as well as in The New York Times, Camerawork: A Journal of Photographic Arts, Photo Metro, Artweek, Artlies, and AestheticsToday.blogs.

Website

kathryndunlevie.com

Contact

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