Erinn Kathryn

In The Frail  is a series of ‘constructed poems’ built from one text (Persons & Places, George Santayana). Initiated a decade ago, this project gained momentum in 2020 to attend to pervasive unknowns that became unignorably acute while sheltering in place. Confined by a palette of existing words, the verses reveal glimpses into the subconscious at waypoints in time. They catalogue experiential milestones, wrestle with notions of inside vs. outside, productivity, captivity, creativity, & “otherness”. They convey anxiety, unsettledness, & prostration borne of idle time in a world on pause. These cantos also offer slivers of hope & resiliency; reminders that progress is not linear, & avowal that revolution can begin with a whisper. 

"Comprised of 26 poems made over a five-year period, In the Frail is a dialogue, an invitation, a collection of embodied verse." --- emmi greer, editor

This debut poetry collection will be released by Buckman Journal on September 3rd, 2024, and is available for pre-order now on their website. Pre-orders will include a companion broadsheet! Hurry on over and reserve a copy today.

2021.

photographic prints, screenprints on plexiglass, wood.

each box approximately 29 1/2″ x 43 1/2″ x 9 1/2″

Our Vested Heritage (Mt. Rushmore)

Undefined (Bears Ears)

Looking Upstream (Glen Canyon Dam)

Titan of Chasms (Grand Canyon),

These large-scale iterations of the series were created in 2021 with support from a MAKE grant from Regional Arts and Culture Council.

Photos by Mario Gallucci.

Lists of indigenous names provided from nativeland.ca

2021

found plastic, gold leaf, rust, charcoal, resin

installed dimensions: 104” x 8” x 1.5”

Collar is part of a new series called Alter-Ego which re-assigns value or purpose to found plastic trash. Plastics are found in almost every object we use. We know this. From toothbrushes to cell phones, water bottles to disposable masks, they are littering every aspect of the environment, and they will long outlive us. They will likely instigate our species’ demise.

In creating unique replicas of one obliterated object, I consider ideas about consumption, mass-production, life-span and mortality. As my mold deteriorates with each cast, a unique item is born; just slightly different from the others. In eliminating the context and origin, I elevate our plastic waste.

Collar conjures ancient and classical adornment as worn by goddesses, priestesses, and royalty for protection, fertility, beauty and ritual. It also implies restraint, subjugation, or enslavement, like prison collars, or those employed by colonial settlers involved in African slave trading.

2021

natural materials, adhesive, wood and metal dowels, acrylic paint, rubber lungs, beads, golf leaf.

Warrior, 7” x 3” x 3”

Ancestor, 15” x 4.25” x 4.5”

Crone, 12.5” x 6.5” x 6”

Shaman, 6” x 6.5” x 6”

Venus, 9” x 14” x 20”

Witch, 7” x 3” x 2.5”

Womb/Sacrum, 14” x 5” x 3”

In June of 2021 I was offered the opportunity to pilot a new residency program at the Zymoglyphic Museum in Portland, OR where I live. This was my first dive back into making since the pandemic began. As a resident, I would use the materials found onsite, rather than my own catalogue of materials. Someone else’s found, collected, and reclaimed materials would be my palette.

In June, a return to normalcy seemed imminent, so I had been thinking about a way out of this pandemic, of what it might look like on the other side, and how I (we) could even get there alone– with all of the grief of lives lost, jobs lost, experiences lost, missing human connections, livelihoods on hold, and endless unknowns.

I had recently celebrated the ten-year anniversary of my mother’s passing as well. This was heavy on my heart; a personal weight I was carrying on top the collective weight(s) of this time.

The figures that emerged from my study; relating sticks and lichen to seed pods, sea kelp, feathers, and bones, are female archetypes to “mother” myself back to knowing and being in the world. They are talismans for the grief and longing, birth/rebirth, connection, wisdom, and guidance for which I needed support. They are symbolic healers for all of those in need of renewal in this time.

In 2018, I had the privilege of joining Wide Open Studios, an outdoor residency program run by Portland-based Signal Fire, for a one month research trip to the American Southwest. This inquiry-based immersive experience connected us with tribal leaders, activists, ecologists and writers committed to exposing the hardships and histories of these lands: decades of exploitation and blatant destruction of sacred sites and ecosystems, longstanding oppression of indigenous communities/original peoples, and ongoing secrecy regarding environmental and human impacts of buried nuclear waste and mining practices.

As an American student of public schools in Central Pennsylvania, I had been force-fed the settler ideals of Westward Expansion, Manifest Destiny and wealth and ownership in regard to “the West”, complemented by glorifying tales of nuclearism, patriotism and tourism to America’s great “public” lands, handed down by extended family. Most of us were.

Lands of Enchantment, challenges the glossy, picturesque, Kodachrome mirages of colonialist America. The form was inspired by a vintage postcard diorama I found in a local shop. I was captivated that someone took the time to create such an homage to a place they had been. Postcards, I thought, are the talismans of tourism. They memorialize one’s experience in a place, they idealize the place itself. But what if they revealed truths?

In my dioramas, idyllic postcard imagery is obscured by truths: black text listing the indigenous tribes who have stewardship over the land and red text revealing an unspoken truth about the condition of that land.

*lists of indigenous names provided from nativeland.ca

Topographic rendering of three renown monuments of the PNW. Based on old topo maps and photographic imagery, then I exaggerated scale for dramatic effect. In rendering these for aesthetics and commodification (i.e. to hang over the mantel), I invoke the glamorization of western landscapes and landforms of white settler colonialism, and detachment-of-place that comes with such glorification.

all scrap wood, paper, paint, ink, pine frames.

2018

concrete, wood, latex, scrap metal, found plastic, adhesive, spray paint, acrylic, led lighting effects/ shadow play

site-specific installation @ Denizen Gallery, Milepost 5, Portland, OR

Terran Slide is an installation made entirely from post-consumer materials. As a follow-up to the barren-earth landscapes of Glean, this landscape suggests the urban/industrial ruins of a metropolis. Various sites conjure a rail yard, an industrial waterfront, a ship yard, and a defunct water power plant. Funded by Regional Arts and Culture Council.

Photos by Mario Gallucci.

Created from 95 percent reclaimed materials harvested from Portland City dump as part of GLEAN Artist Residency in Portland, OR in 2016. The series depicts a landscape otherworldly, paper-thin and barren, suggesting remnants of a technological civilization.

It was critical for me to convey the gravity and severity of waste I saw in residence, and the potential trajectory of it overtaking us.

Photos by Ian Wallace.

These artificial islands were born from the beautiful misshapen scrapings from my paint palette, which I saw as little aerial images of land mass. They conjured the artificial islands ‘utopias’ that do exist (and continue to be constructed) as in Dubai and Qatar.

These tiny vignettes of “proposed island utopias” for future inhabitation offer an escape from industrial waste, rising sea levels, and environmental ruin forthcoming. Not unlike the once touted Save a Whale program of the 1980s, where we all received an “authentic” photo of our whale’s tail, one may acquire a painting of an imaginary little slice of heaven and its accompanying muse to comfort the beleaguered soul.

2016

FMRL is a portrait of the city of Portland through its trash.

Each day for several months we collected trash around inner SE Industrial Portland, and across the Hawthorne Bridge in SW Portland. Every piece was pinned to the gallery wall, literally mapping the area from which it was collected.

In collaboration with Tyler Corbett.

This project was partially funded by an honorarium from Regional Arts and Culture Council.

The title, Things Are Looking Up, is a sarcastic comment about the ongoing gentrification of the Boise-Eliot Neighborhood in Portland. Using public records and data from Portland Maps, we chronicled every building within a designated radius of the gallery, to create a visual graph of the neighborhood’s structures by year of construction.

Newer buildings were set aloft on dowels, indicating their higher monetary property value and lack of connection the ground, to history, and to the “roots” of the community.

In collaboration with Tyler Corbett.

2013

In My River Runs to Thee, colorful, yet faithfully rendered, topographic models explore the surface tensions of the natural landforms and build environments along the Columbia River from Portland, OR to the confluence with the Pacific Ocean in Astoria, OR.

The theatricality of these monolithic sites, extracted from their setting and surroundings, creates a conversation between notions of intimacy and detachment, appearances and absences, and ultimately maps the ways mythologies are made.

In collaboration with Tyler Corbett.

Photos by Ian Wallace.

2012

From website archiving the project:

“In a Time of Change: The Art of Fire was a visual art project designed generate excitement, facilitate mutual understanding and promote meaningful dialogue on issues related to fire science and society. The interaction between artists, fire managers and scientists promoted understanding and awareness of the scientific basis behind fire management practices in the context of Alaska's changing ecosystems.

Nine local artists were invited to embrace the inspiration of wildfire, fire science and fire management to create a unique art exhibit. “In a Time of Change: The Art of Fire” is funded by the Joint Fire Science Program and was developed by the Alaska Fire Science Consortium (AFSC) and the Bonanza Creek Long Term Ecological Research Station” (https://www.frames.gov/afsc/projects/art-of-fire).

Statement on the work:

Inside the forest, 'carcasses' of fallen birch from a fire years ago grabbed my attention- the way the birch skins, still intact, seemed to wrinkle up and separate from the core of the tree, which rotted out. While photographing these carcasses strewn about the forest, I began to notice that growing on them or through them were tiny little micro-cosmic landscapes. If I shifted the scale of things, fungi, cladonia and lycopodium were like "trees" in this miniature world, and variants of green peat mosses were like the tundra tussocks or ferny forest floor.

This juxtaposition of macro-landscape and micro-landscape became the basis for my translation of fire on area. On the grand scale, a piece of the forest is suddenly gone, ravaged, dead. There is a hole in the ecosystem defined by a very specific shape: the shape of a fire's path and girth. It is not a vacuum, however. For in that space, on a smaller scale, whole new miniature landscapes emerge and they begin to fill the void.