KATHERINE DANIELS: WINDOW BOX ARABESQUE / May 13–June 12, 2005

 

 
“Window Box Arabesque” by Katherine Daniels explores the territory between craft and fine art with the Buddhist concept of “outrageous elegance,” which combines passion, sensuousness, sense of play, and humor. Daniels’s sculptures induce pleasure by unabashedly embracing abstract ornament. She is interested in visual form overpowering emotional and intellectual content. Daniels’ work is a conglomeration of materials and forms of organic abstraction that uses patterns and motifs as compositional structure. It forms a pastiche of styles referencing ornament from the American folk art of my Appalachian roots, a fascination with Islamic and Asian art, Italian art from the Renaissance to the Rococo, as well as contemporary art.