EVERYDAY DEVOTIONS

Recent Works by Katherine Bartel

“Rose & Martha,” 2000, digital print in wood cabinet, with mixed media, 29” tall by 14” wide by 11 1/2” deep.

The print portrays my Aunt Rose and her friend Martha in the kind of portrait often taken early in the 20th century. The contents of my grandmother’s sewing box fill the drawer. My uncle carved the crochet hook when he was a child as a gift for her.

An old wooden ironing board holds a home altar, made up of elements women used in caring for their families. The tea towel that hangs above it on the wash line has an illustration from a 19th century book for girls, showing how we learn our roles. It is Wednesday, the day for “mending.” Women are no longer expected to darn socks in a time when we can buy new ones at Walmart, but socks without your mother’s stitches are not the same. Neither is a bout with the flu the same without her chicken soup. Mothers are our nurses, responsible for healing. Until my mother died in 1994, my sister still called her a long distance diagnosis whenever she was ill.

“Vestment for Katie,” 2001, mixed media on cotton slip, 45” tall by 25”wide.

Grandma’s passion, when she got to work for herself, was to grow flowers. Her front yard was planted completely full of them, with no room left for grass.

My great-grandmother emigrated from Switzerland to Kansas in 1897. Upon arriving at the train station in Newton with her stepdaughter Anna, she and Emil Kym went directly to the courthouse and got married before going home. The Mennonite community around Buhler, Kansas, took them in and helped them make a living. Emil was a folk artist who decorated houses, and Elise raised a large garden. She and their 6 children sold vegetables to help support the family. She loved children, doting on them even in the next generation. The pillow cases used in this piece are hers, the needlework unmatched by my own.

“Interlude,” 2001, video installation, 6’2” wide by 6’6” tall by 6’6” deep, wood, fabric, found objects, rolls, wheat, video seen through window on continuous DVD.

My purpose is to recreate memories, which occupy a different landscape than waking life. In “Interlude,” the video is in slow motion, and the soundtrack’s voices sound as if they are in the distance. I wanted to create the sensation a child might have lying on the kitchen floor while the adults are talking. The voices are speaking Low German, my family’s dialect. They list what they ate when they were children. More distinct are the wind and crickets, the sounds I remember from growing up in Kansas.

“Uncle Irv,” 2002, digital print, 15 by 10 inches.

This portrait shows my uncle holding the championship basketball for his junior high team in the 1930’s. Pictured with him is his father. Grandpa farmed, but it wasn’t his top priority. When he was out on the tractor, and a good story occurred to him, he would jump right off and head to town to relay it to his friends while it was fresh in his mind. Uncle Irv inherited his father’s ability, famous in central Kansas for his Low German advertising and entertainments.

A few of us have gardens, and we plant token amounts of flowers and vegetables. My father is still a farmer at heart, planting not one but several ambitious gardens. We never had to buy vegetables at any time of the year. His way of nurturing and providing for us was to grow things. In doing so he was also nurtured by the memory of helping his own mother in the garden when he was a child. (He lost his mother at the age of 12.) Thus gardening has become not only a way of storing up for the future, but a link to the past. Agriculture is our foundation, watching crops marks the seasons. Here, the cycle of growing is the cycle of life, a spiritual journey.

The piece has been shown in 2 exhibits this year, and reviewed as part of the exhibit, “After Whiteness,” in the online publication “New City Chicago.” Said Michael Workman of this piece,

“Her mixed-media video, ‘Offerings,’ depicts a kitchen in a typical white home at the edge of suburbia, sink piled with the bounty of the fields. In this fantasy of white bountifulness a core of purity promising ‘beauty, success, sophistication and love.’ Not to mention the profound sense of safety evinced by such a perpetually enclosed view of the world in which the message that cleanliness is close to godliness cuts between the pristine of whiteness and the culturally reinforced connotations of ‘uncleanliness’ implied by the color black.” (Michael Workman, “Eye Exam: Whitewash,” New City Chicago, October 2003.)

“Pearl’s Family,” 2003, digital print, 14 1/4 by 15 1/2 inches .

Another family portrait, this again shows people at varying ages. Remnants of their generation include recipe cards, cookie molds and mother’s charm bracelet. The background grid is reminiscent of quilts and their association with warmth as well as history.

“Invocation,” recreated 2003 (originally exhibited in 1998), mixed media, 108” tall by 63” wide by 34” deep

This wood cupboard contains wheat, old photographs, canned goods, crocheted trim & snowflakes, toys, dishes, candles, peppernuts, springerli, zwieback, dried sunflowers and marigolds, etc. The first of my series of altar installations, this shrine honors my ancestors in the tradition of Mexican altars for the “Day of the Dead.”