Katherine Rutecki
Katherine Rutecki
Feb 2025
You have quite a long history working with glass, crystal & bronze. What attracts you to these materials?
I enjoy the way the processes of lost wax glass casting and bronze casting translate to one another. Both are very ancient materials and methods, though glass casting has recently rapidly advanced in process and size with the advent of electric kilns and computer controllers.
Were you around art making as a child?
I have known I was an artist since I was a small child, it’s how I express myself and my interests. I was always drawing, and began sculpting as a teenager.
Is there a part of your practice that you enjoy most?
The sculpting or making process, where my thoughts and actions come together -I’m not yet stressing about if a material will work properly, I’m just doing.
What informed your use of colour for this show?
My current colour preference is for moody mauves. For example, I’m at the Rose Gardens writing this (my preferred reading and writing place) and there is a pale lavender gray rose that is calling to me.
Is there anything unusual you research or do to inspire your work?
When I started this series of pinched candlesticks and vessels I realized I was pulling from my knowledge of blown glass goblet construction. I leaned into it with this exhibition, combining my current research into tales and myths around fish and sea creatures and mashed up iconography. I’ve centred on venetian style dolphins in these objects.
Are there any new techniques or materials you would like to explore?
Yes! Always new (and old) glass techniques from blown glass designs I’ve been working on to pate-de-verre kiln-formed works. Also, I have a stash of logs that I plan to carve in my studio, Queensland Kauri from a limb fallen in the cyclone (it pierced the wet earth like a spear!), I was fortunate enough to be around when the council was cutting it up and was allowed to fill the car boot. I got an update last week from my woodturner friend who I split the hoard with and he said the wood should be dry enough in a couple months.
Are there any recurring themes that run through your work?
My art has always been a means to express emotions and concepts that I struggle to articulate or process; always grounded in materiality, physical work, physical materials, and body. This exhibition deals with manipulation of materials through touch, of immediacy of action. The objects are built up out of decisions and movements of my hands. They are made of accumulations of touch. Likewise the accompanying drawings are executed with a brush and ink because I enjoy the decision making and fluidity of hand movement necessary in this approach, there is no erasure, only doing.
