AUBURN — This month’s featured artist in the Gritty’s Art and Ale window is Katherine Cargile. Cargile is a middle school art teacher who is highly interested in literature, history and visual culture studies. These aspects of her life shape and inspire her artwork. Cargile works in a variety of media, including painting, drawing, printmaking, appliqué quilting and paper mache sculpture. Her subject matter ranges from the beauty of the people, objects and places that make up her everyday life to fanciful ideas from myths, legends, tales and her own wild imagination.
Cargile approaches painting like the act of quilting. She mixes patterns and textures with diverse visual elements from her life — antique advertisements, knick-knacks and mementos, old family photos, obsessions from her past, emblems of her childhood — and she stitches them together in a non-specific space saturated with color. While the resulting paintings have clear narratives for her, she wants viewers to be able to put their own stories into these paintings.
The artistic process is like trying to tune an old radio. There are many different stations and frequent static. When you get a clear station it’s always best to listen intently to what is playing.
Cargile’s work will be up until Thanksgiving week. The Gritty’s Art and Ale window is curated by the Union of Maine Visual Artists LA Chapter.
FMI: email UMVALewistonAuburn@gmail.com.
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