Moments of Relief | Masumi Kataoka, Katy Schmader, and Melissa Walter

Moments of Relief is an exhibition of tactile material explorations in the form of prints and wearable art.

Masumi Kataoka‘s jewelry utilizes insect structures combined with forms inspired by human body parts. Her various sources are drawn from the use of animals and insects as characters in children’s books, symbolic use in art throughout history, and more recently from eastern idioms involving insects believed to have lived within people controlling their emotions.

Katy Schmader creates abstract landscape collages exploring the connection between the tactile traces of a physical environment and the art-historic system of landscape semiotics that have traditionally been derived from them. The compositions of torn paper dyed with natural elements from the environments they emulate, are scanned, manipulated and enlarged, resulting in a print related to, but separate from, the original collage. The process is influenced by the medium of photography: A photographic negative is not a single, final expression of intent, rather, it represents an initial narrowing of intent, holding several potential expressions, before the act of printing narrows the work into a single, particular expression.

Melissa Walter explores place and community through abstract prints. “It is not a place but people that have the most impact on my life and therefore also on my artistic practice.” Drawing from these meaningful connections, the prints begin as overlapped silhouette drawings of people who have influenced Walter’s life and view of Houston, as well as other places she has called home. In some areas the figures become apparent, in others they fade away becoming more of a landscape or map of place.