Day 10/100: Karen Chaisson and Kathrine Allen
Encouraging Two Artists Who Think Outside the Frame
Today, I am celebrating Karen Chaisson and Kathrine Allen. Both of these artists work in many mediums and create pieces that exceed the boundaries of traditional substrates.
I’m thrilled that they will both be joining me in the online show, Square Foot Show: In Bloom with Debbie Miller & Friends, that starts on March 30, 2022.
Karen Chaisson
Karen Chaisson was born in Banff, Alberta, but she grew up in Southern Ontario. She returned to Alberta to marry and have a family and currently lives in the Cochrane area.
Karen is the Director at Route 22 Artist Collective, a gallery and educational space that is dedicated to providing a nurturing environment for artists at all levels of their creative journey. Karen enjoys helping the organization fulfill its mission of encouraging community participation in arts through education and outreach.
She’s been painting for as long as she can remember and has been showing and selling her work for 25 years. Her preferred medium is oil (sometimes with cold wax), but Karen’s work breaks genre and medium barriers.
She paints on recycled mannequins.
She creates wire sculptures of birds (mostly crows and ravens).
She uses beautiful rocks to form the foundation of her wire tree assemblages.
And, of course, she works on canvas, creating beautiful landscapes and florals.
Each creative avenue that Karen explores offers a new way to capture moments, light and shadow, movement, color, and shapes — all in service of what she considers her greatest joy as an artist: to evoke an emotion in a viewer.
Take a look at her breadth of work and discover what emotions stir in you!
Kathrine Allen
When I first met Kathrine Allen at an art show in central FL over 10 years ago, I was literally jumping up and down and clapping with delight like a 5 year-old — which was admittedly embarrassing. (Had she been a character from the Ted Lasso show, she might have quipped: “I never know what to do when a grown woman does ‘kindergarten giddy’ in front of me.”)
But I was SMITTEN with her combination of painting, linoblock printing, embroidery, pattern tissue and articles of vintage clothing. I knew I had to have some of her artwork. Now, nearly every room in our home is adorned with one or more of her pieces. I even commissioned her to make one of her fabulous dress painting assemblages with my christening dress!
Kathrine hails from Canada and can’t remember a time when she didn’t want to be an artist.
Her mother shared her art school sketches with Kathrine when she was very young. She knew right then that being able to draw was some sort of magic. Her grandmother, a former pattern maker, taught her needlework. And she was fortunate to have a dedicated and excited art teacher in public school who encouraged her to put in the hours needed to develop her skills. Photography, pottery, and printmaking became her favorite media, and her first summer job was in a pottery studio, scraping kiln shelves, and sifting fireplace ash to make glaze.
She received an Associate of Arts degree from the Visual Arts Program at Camosun College and continued studying at Victoria College of Art and Design, through group lessons with favorite artists, and at workshops at Metchosin International Summer School of the Arts.
She moved to the U.S. in 1998. There, her friend and former husband introduced her to the Arts Festival circuit, which is still one of her primary mechanisms for selling her art. (I guess I’m not the only one who discovered her the way I did, under a white tent on an lane of artisans.)
Today, she makes her home in artsy Jackson, Georgia, where you might find her cutting linoleum blocks, pulling prints, glazing pottery, thinking up humorous ways to use vintage images and text, painting traditionally, embroidering found textiles, or adding texture to painted canvases with ephemera — all aided by her studio- and life-partner, ceramic artist Kyle Osvog, and their studio cats, Peaches and Herb.
Her florals might show up as block-printed zinnias on a mid-century prom gown, or embroidered elements in a mixed media piece that combines still life painting, fabric, ribbon, and bits and bobs.
But whatever the medium or the subject, her work tells a story and invites us to be curious and playful. I love that you can almost hear her sly giggle and see her mischievous smile when you are looking at her quirky and compelling artworks.
How You Can Be an Encouragement
Please check out Karen and Kathrine’s work on social media, follow them, and send them notes of encouragement today.
Also, you can purchase some of their floral work at great prices at the Square Foot Show: In Bloom with Debbie Miller and Friends, starting March 30, 2022 through April 1, 2022.
Karen Chaisson:
On Instagram: @k.chaissonart
Website: www.karenchaisson.com
Kathrine Allen:
On Instagram: @kathrineallenart
Website: www.kathrineallencoleman.com