Let's give a warm welcome to our first Visiting Artist of 2023, Katherine Toukhy.
In early 2020, Erie Arts & Culture launched a visiting artist residency program in collaboration with Long Road Projects. Through this program, Erie Arts & Culture and Long Road Projects provide contemporary artists with dedicated time and space to reflect, research, and create new bodies of work – outside of their usual environments. This program also creates opportunities for new perspectives and creative processes to be shared, which in turn positively impacts the cultural and creative landscape in Northwestern Pennsylvania.
This visiting artist residency program is made possible through the generous support of a privately funded grant from The Erie Community Foundation.
Residency Plan:
Katherine is seeking new ways to represent the dynamic human figure by drawing while she moves spontaneously, according to an inner rhythm. "I have noticed that our emotions and our moving bodies carry intelligence and energy, and I want to bring that out in my pieces," says Katherine. "From these spontaneously drawn surfaces, I will shape a wall piece using figurative abstraction."
"I am also really interested in facilitating small groups in movement drawing on large paper/canvas/walls. Working collectively in this way, we can open up new ways of moving, making marks, and connecting. Movement has helped me connect more holistically to myself, and I believe it can help us connect more with each other and the environment around us.
My goals at the residency are: 1.) to pilot a community workshop with movement drawing and gain feedback from participants on how to evolve this group process and 2) to make an ephemeral large-scale wall piece that reflects the energy of our moving bodies using figurative abstraction. I also aim to record these processes for future study and make a print edition while in residence."
Community Involvement:
Katherine will lead a workshop at GROUNDED Printshop Feb 20th from 5:30 -7:30 pm. Up to 10 creatives from our community are invited to join her. Please use the form below to register:
About Katherine:
Katherine Toukhy lives and works in Flatbush, Brooklyn (unceded Lenapehoking). In the studio, she transforms figurative shapes into mixed media, animation, and public art. She has exhibited with the Bronx Museum, the Park Ave Armory, Wave Hill, BRIC, Trestle Gallery, and the Arab American National Museum among others. Select public projects have included a mural for the Flatbush African Burial Ground, supported by the City Artist Corps Grant (2021) and “The Khayamiyya Monument,” a social sculpture commissioned by The Laundromat Project (2017). In 2021, her piece “We Are the Fabric,” was published in Vogue to highlight Park Ave Armory’s “100 Years 100 Women,” celebrating women’s suffrage. Toukhy has also worked with support from The Foundation for Contemporary Arts, BRIC Media Fellowship, The Laundromat Project, The Rema Hort Mann Foundation, Brooklyn Arts Council, and The Project for Empty Space, among others.
