Artist Biography
Katie Baldwin (b. 1969, Seattle, WA, lives and works in Huntsville, Alabama, USA)
Baldwin holds an MFA from the University of the Arts [2004] and a BA from Evergreen State College (1994).
As a Fulbright Scholar (2021), she developed her project Modified Landscape at the International Print Center in Taipei, Taiwan. She has traveled internationally as an artist-in-residence to Ireland, Scotland, Iceland, Nicaragua, Poland, Cuba, Mexico and Japan. She was one of seven international artists selected to learn traditional Japanese woodblock printing (mokuhanga) from master carvers and printers at the Nagasawa Residency on Awaji Island, Japan (2004). Baldwin returned to Japan in 2017 and 2019 for the Mi-Lab Advanced and Upper Advanced Residency in Kawaguchi. She has been an artist in residence at Ballinglen Arts Foundation (Ballycastle, Ireland, 2023 – 2024), The Common Press at the University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, PA, 2019 – 2023), the University of Hawai’i (Hilo, HI, 2017), and Women’s Studio Workshop (Rosendale, NY, 2013).
Her work has been exhibited extensively, including James A. Michener Art Museum (Doylestown, PA, 2024), Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art (Manhattan, KS, 2023 – 2024), Montgomery Museum of Fine Art (2017, Mobile, AL), and The Print Center (Philadelphia, PA, 2013). Her artist books can be found in numerous collections, such as the Library of Congress (Washington DC), Swarthmore College (Swarthmore, PA), University of California (Berkeley, CA) and Yale University Library Special Collections (New Haven, CT). She has received grant funding through several organizations, including South Arts (Atlanta, GA), Pennsylvania Council on the Arts (Harrisburg, PA), Independence Foundation Fellowship in the Arts (Philadelphia, PA) and Leeway Foundation (Philadelphia, PA).
Baldwin served as the Victor Hammer Fellow at Wells College (Aurora, NY, 2011 – 2013). She is currently a Professor at the University of Alabama Huntsville, where she was awarded the Distinguished Research and Creative Activities Award (2022) and teaches book arts and printmaking.
Baldwin co-founded the wood+paper+box collaborative with Mariko Jesse and Yoonmi Nam (2013), the Shift-labcollective with Denise Bookwalter, Sarah Bryant, Macy Chadwick and Tricia Treacy (2013), and the international print collective Mokuhanga Sisters (2020).
Artist Statement
My work explores methods of abstraction and representation of landscape through printmaking, drawing and textiles. Recognizable subjects of rivers, mountains and gardens are deconstructed utilizing color, pattern, shape and form. I am immersed in making work by hand: blocks are carved, inked up and hand-pulled, fabric is pieced and stitched. My process is a physical reminder of limitations, while serving as a direct response to the tactile act of making things. My images utilize a compositional structure, such as inverted point of view, as well as defiance of scale, proportions and time. In this way, the work challenges the unity of time by showing several moments at once. I reveal the interior and exterior of both human-made and natural environments. My imagery depicts both a familiar and imagined world, inspired by fact, fiction, and first impressions of the world around me. Mountains, rivers, cages, and bridges become the manufactured stages on which complex narratives play out.