"My work explores the intersection of physical place and cultural space through the open language of pattern. I question how I, as a white woman in America, can (re) locate myself in relationship to the histories and critical conversations surrounding racism, the environment and privilege through my art. The metaphor-laden panel paintings and artist-designed wallpaper presented are a specific response to my experience of the Sweet Briar Slave Cemetery, Amherst, VA, while on residency in 2018 at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Through numerous iterations and missteps, I explore the opportunity inherent in its making and my own anti-racist efforts. The work, like me, is imperfect. Each and every day, as I consider the land and its complex social history, I seek to create a compression of time, a dialog between the past and present and a conversation for today.
"I respectfully acknowledge the land that my work was inspired by and created on including the original stewards, the Siouan People of the Monacan and Manahoac tribes of the Piedmont and Blue Ridge Mountain regions of Virginia and, here in Eugene/ Springfield, the traditional indigenous homeland of the Kalapuya people."
Kathleen Caprario traded the concrete canyons of New York City for the real canyons and broad skies of the Pacific NW and has established herself as a widely exhibited artist and an art educator. Caprario is the recipient of a Jordan Schnitzer Black Lives Matter Artist Grant, an Oregon Arts Commission Individual Artist Fellowship, a Lane Arts Artist Grant, the Modesto Lanzone Mostra Award, OAC Career Opportunity Grants and Ford Family Mid Career Residency Awards, as well as numerous artist residencies. Caprario is a founding member of the creative cohort, Gray Space Project, an artist member of Eugene Contemporary Art and a part time studio instructor for Lane Community College.