After a busy October I am trying to get caught up on a bunch of pending blog posts so I will start off with a review of a September 24th visit to the Los Angeles Art Association’s Gallery 825. I went specifically to see my friend Richard Hutman’s work, which is fantastic, and discovered Kat Flyn’s work.
Kat Flyn - “Camptown Racists” 2017
Kat Flyn is a self-taught assemblage artist from San Diego. She had a long career as a costume designer in Southern California during which time she amassed a trove of artifacts and collectables. Thirty years ago, she began using these items as a base to create assemblage art dealing with many different social justice issues. Kat describes herself as follows: “I am a white Anti-racist Feminist artist. My sympathies almost always reside with the underdog, so my works highlight rigged institutionalized aspects of our culture. Strictly speaking I am an assemblage sculptor because I construct more than assemble my works. My process is to search out artifacts, collectables, and wood carvings and then build scenes to make statements regarding American society. Even when I use artifacts from earlier periods, my subject is almost always about contemporary America.”
I immediately was taken by how strong Kat’s work was when I saw it. The pieces are well crafted and beautiful objects in themselves even though the subject matter is usually not. The message of each is tight and most all the pieces I saw would be good additions to museum collections interested in her subject matter. I think it is a good thing that Kat is “self-taught”, I think that allows her to maintain that folk art style better because she isn’t trying to conform to any structured design rules she was taught, she is just following her feeling which is wonderful.
I had two concerns about her work but the more I think about them I don’t know if I have a valid position on either point. The work she showed at Gallery 825 was titled “Hardball, Racism in Sports” and it basically dealt with how America has treated African Americans in the past as well as today. My first thought was the work would have deeper value if it had been created by an African American artist expressing their experiences rather than by a white Anti-racist Feminist artist. I realize anyone can, and should, call out racism but that message seems stronger from people experiencing it personally more than those witnessing it. Then when I researched Kat and her work I saw where she pointed out that many of the black face artifacts which she incorporates into her work were created by white artists for retail products. With that knowledge then it made perfect sense for a white artist to take those objects and use them to tell a different narrative. The only other concern was altering antiques and artifacts which should be preserved so we learn from our past. The more I thought about it I realized that these items were often mass produced and should be in many museums already and what Kat is doing is just finding another way to preserve them and stimulate thought and dialogue on something wrong from our past. I am sure that Kat and I don’t share all the same opinions about the world today but that’s fine, she is a good artist, and her work should be seen.
This exhibition was Kat’s fourth solo exhibition, hopefully her work starts finding its ways into the right permanent collections soon, it has value on many levels. She is represented by Jonathan Ferrara Gallery in New Orleans, their website has an outstanding collection of her work available for viewing.