K. Thornburgh-Mueller

is spit is ice is a muddy puddle, of dusted light, is a crack in cement is a fallen tree branch is a fence’s shadow is rusted iron is a tear in a pair of tights is a spider web is a tissue slide is a dewdrop is a dot of blood from a needle into my thigh is the memory of your eye is a cicada shedding is a hang nail is

In a tension between adoration and obsession, I become entranced by intricate forms I notice in passing or that I seek out. This fluid, fragile, fleeting genre of shapes and textures manifests as a visual language that seeks to rhyme with and collapse these instances into each other. The imagery I produce becomes autonomous from this collection of observations and associated memories. The forms themselves appear to be frozen in perpetual movement: mutating, stretching, fragmenting, repairing. They could be sketches of a familiar, other world.

I articulate my spatially orientation-less drawings with a mechanical pencil, graphite powder, and/or muted pastels. These materials give me control over the minutiae of my mark-making. This meticulousness contrasts the spontaneous way my marks accumulate. Some drawings are quick: they come as unedited streams of consciousness that emulate journal entries or letters. Others take weeks of layering, erasing, tracing, blending – they metamorphize, reflecting the final abstract biomorphic image itself.

I mostly use paper that I have come upon by chance (it used to belong to my grandma, it was in a random thrift store bin, someone gave it to me) or that I have handmade by recycling readings printed for university classes. I find a greater expression of intimacy in both making and viewing the works when I have some connection to the paper itself. The handmade paper is highly textured and contains traces of its making, such as finger indentations. It is one way in which my drawings fold into my companion sculptural practice.

For sculpture, my current preferred materials are water, clays, fibers, and plastics. Through developing small experiments into roughly body-sized sculptures, I explore tensions between consumption, preservation, and decay and evaluate relations between “built/synthetic” and “natural” environments. Some sculptures stand alone; some are paired with performance; some performances stand alone. Performance thrusts me into vulnerability, transports me into my moving body, and reinforces the flow of becoming and unbecoming that is the backbone of my practice.

is a tap on the drum machine is conversation converging is feet pressed into the air is chains of infected pearls is thumbprints of curls is haunting oil fields is the satellite’s trance is a rock on a scanner bed is a bittersweet taste is growing, sapping, returning, expanding is a spiral of salt and ice on Chicago winter roads is an antenna is a fold of moss is

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Uninvited Guest, 2022. Found plastic sheet, steel, projected performance (recorded by Arthur Johnson Weiss), clay, water, sometimes IV bag, 3.5' x 5' x 4', Installation video by the artist.