Kate Wurtzel (Ph.D) is a visual artist, art educator, and professor at Appalachian State University in North Carolina, United States.

Her previous work focused on emergence, body movement while painting, and the importance of ritualization in the creative process for someone who is neurodivergent and has a physical disability. She initially went to the Fish Factory to investigate how her own non-abled body responded to the landscape, and to write and paint through the lens of embodied phenomenology, however when she arrived the work and some life elements took an unexpected turn.

In Kate’s own words, she explains: During my short stay at the residency we encountered severe weather fluctuations and at the same time I was going through some life changes as well. My body responded to the weather with tenacity, persistence, some anxiety and pain, as well as significant periods of joy and physical-emotional peace. As a response to the environmental situation and the points of reflection in life, the work became less about physical-bodily responses and more about accessing internal strength and a need for more relational intimacy overall. Inspired by the quiet majestic strength of the mountains in the Eastfjords, and the deep and nearly primal connection to the land when in Iceland, the work shifted to reveal a desire for connectivity to spirituality, bodies, stories, ancestors, magic, and more.

Consequently, my time at the Fish Factory opened an unexpected portal of desire; it revealed a need to understand my felt-embodied-connection to Iceland and investigate ancestral histories that touch-in to the supernatural and move beyond linear ways of knowing. The short, yet incredible, residency set me on a quest to know more about these deeply sensed experiences, including the complexity of relational intimacy, and the well of intra-connected ancestral strength we carry on an affectual level that often can only be accessed through creative gestures and sensed-ties to land/place. While the end result may not have been about the non-abled body in Iceland as planned, ultimately what emerged highlighted a need to move beyond the binary of abled/dis-abled, and instead reach for an expression of strength and connectivity in several ways.

Website:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dr.k8creates/