Rebecca Katz received her BA in Art History from Duke University and her MFA in Printmaking from California College of the Arts. Her artwork includes screenprints, monotypes and drawing. In the work, she often combines her love for animals with a critical wit about the state of our world.
Animals provide a connection, a point of passage, and a glimpse into seeing the world differently. How is their understanding of the world the same or different than our experiences?
Animals have language. Even if we don’t know what they are saying, their forms of communication are complex and varied. For example, elephants communicate with low frequency calls beyond the range of human hearing. And elephants use their feet to send signals through the ground to reach elephants up to twenty miles away.
The concept of sentience is the ability to feel, perceive, or experience subjectivity and awareness. Scientific studies have demonstrated that a wide variety of species experience emotions. For example, elephants grieve, rats are merciful, and dolphins care for their aging elders. The artwork may convey animals’ capacity to experience a range of emotions, such as joy, grief, deceit, and empathy.
In addition, many animals are indicators of what’s happening to our ecosystems. The sensitive permeable skin of frogs and other amphibians makes them early indicators of toxins in the environment—they are one of the first species to show adverse reactions to disruptions in the climate.
The prints suggest the multi-layered interactions of our shared experiences with animals. Aren’t animals as important to the human psyche and collective imagination as food and shelter? Anyone who has lived with companion animals has witnessed that animals have individual personalities. Our friendships with animals may be as vital as our friendships with other people.
Regarding the technique for the “Excavation Series”
The technique used to create the multi-process “excavation” prints entails coating Arches 88 paper with several transparent base layers followed by numerous layers of ink. After the layers of ink have dried, sandpaper is used to remove ink, thereby revealing color and imagery below the initial surface. An additional image (or images) can be printed as a final layer. The results are surprising and experimental.