We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Kathryn Martin a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Kathryn thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

All my projects are meaningful as to do a project is to inject it with meaning from the beginning. I search at the start of all projects to find and connect with its specific meaning and hold tight to it until the project is complete and full, if not running over. It is fundamentally impossible for me to say which project has been the most meaningful because to do so would underestimate just how important meaning is in the creation of a work of Art.

As an Artist and Art Educator, my number one rule is meaning. There must be meaning. I want my students, and I want me, as the hired artist to find personal, connected and shared meaning that leads to the idea, connects to the inspiration, and helps steer us back when we get off course.

The idea, be it found in the client, the location, or even the material must have and be meaningful to the artist. If the idea behind the work isn’t meaningful, why do it? What would be the motivation to work harder, dig deeper, and stay at it if it didn’t mean anything?

I believe that to be successful, and to implement successful projects is to go beyond just doing the project at hand. To be successful is to find out what the project can be, and a strategy to do that: finding meaningful ways to connect to it and remember, if it’s important to the artist, the implied worth will be evident to the viewer.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I moved to Milwaukee, WI in 1997 to attend school at The Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design (MIAD) where I fell in love with Sculpture, Art History and my now husband, Adam Meurer.

After graduation, I chose to stay in Milwaukee as it is a very accessible and supportive city for the arts and continued my education at The University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee (UWM)’s Peck School of the Arts (PSOA). I earned by M.A. in Intermedia Studies in 2003 and my M.F.A. in Intermedia Studies in 2005. I became a Lecturer at UWM right after graduation and have remained there every since. I formed kathryn e. martin, LLC in 2010, or sometime around then as my practice outside the gallery and museum began to pick up. I was getting approached by collectors and businesses asking me to make specific, one of kind work unique to their spaces, stories and histories.

When meeting with a client, I listen to what they want. I work to find out what is important and how they want the work to interact with their space and its people. I ask how the space is used as I watch how the light and flow of traffic interacts with it. I spend time with the space and its clients, their ideas and the various histories found on site, sifting through their stories to see what is possible, as if I am mining minds to make monuments.

In my work I am not limited to material, scale, location or installation and when selecting materials, I pay attention to form, durability, color and scale among other elements. I think about what the work is intended to do and how I can push its story, working always to reveal the intention of the material and its history, its spaces and connections to viewers.

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

It sounds too simple, or straight forward perhaps but the best thing we can do is be there for each other. We can pick up one another when someone falls, brush them off and send them on their way again with the knowledge that they are not alone. We can help them when they need it knowing that one day we may or rather will need the same. We can buy and support their work, and we can connect them to clients and collectors who may. While we may work in our own houses, individual studios, or small, stand-alone companies we are in this together and the more we join forces, the greater our force is.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

I started working in the public realm 19 years ago when I was commissioned for my first Public Art Project by The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources and The Friends of The Hank Aaron State Trail for “A Place to Sit”.

In pursuit of securing this project, a fellow semi-finalist told me I shouldn’t bother competing because I worked with Styrofoam – and “was a girl.” Rather than let those words defeat me, I used them as fuel, igniting in me something I didn’t know was there and use still to this day.

The high-back chairs of “A Place to Sit” honor the spirit and people of Wisconsin’s American Indian tribes through the creation of 3 high backed chairs, etched with their names. Made from aluminum and ironwood, the chairs are nestled along what it now the Kinnickinnic River and what was once fertile ground for the harvesting of wild rice by American Indians. On an annual basis, various tribes came together peacefully to harvest rice and carry them through the long winter. The arrival of Europeans disrupted Native American life. As Europeans began to settle in the area, American Indians were displaced, and the marsh was filled to provide land for industry. Local Milwaukee historian John Gurda describes the turmoil as a “game of musical chairs. In the end, it was the Indians who had nowhere to sit.”

In their tradition of cooperating with others to share in the bounty of the Menomonee Valley, the chairs stand as reminders and invitations to gather and share in the rich history and promising future of this area.

Since that first public piece, my portfolio continues to build on ideas that dictate material and viewer experience, delivering creativity not limited to material, scale, and location.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.kathrynemartin.com
• Instagram: kathryne.martin
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kathryn-martin-meurer-22072487