ARTIST | KATIE STUBBLEFIELD
BEAUTY IN THE COLLAPSE
“All perceiving is also thinking, all reasoning is also intuition, all observation is also invention.”
- Rudolf Arnheim
Katie Stubblefield is an artist who engages directly with the fragility of human nature, particularly with man-made infrastructures, the manufacturing of power —literal and imagined —and their inevitable collapse. Her work is expansive, starting with exhaustive research into natural disasters, fault lines, global warming, and conspiracies of all kinds, pulling in deeply personal narratives along the way like a hurricane. In this way, Stubblefield’s process is similar to her subject matter, a force of circular energy that becomes increasingly powerful as it collects material, childhood memories growing up in Tennessee, the humidity, and the inherent curiosity that comes from living near murky bodies of water and colliding pressure systems, both natural and human-derived. What truths can be discovered by the decay of a thing? There is no better way to observe the lifespan of an idea, how it pulls apart and begins to degrade, than in a place where time moves more slowly than in other places.
ACCEPTABLE LOSS, 2024 | 36 x 24 inches | Sharpie marker on discarded plexiglass
It is essential in the appreciation of Stubblefield’s artistic practice to understand that science and emotion are one and the same. For instance, the Theory of Relativity is more than a way to explain the perception of time; it is the underpinning of her understanding of the world around her, the idea that energy is everything. In her most current body of work, Collateral Damage, the cathedrals of energy take center stage. Meticulous renderings of power plants are layered on the front and back of repurposed sheets of plexiglass, which become windows into a world where multiple events are happening simultaneously. These layered manifestations of time and place have been created in part so that the viewer can be an active participant in the phenomenon of relativity. We are watching two power systems rise as well as decay, with little indication of which we are observing. In these works, a question is embedded that the artist does not seek to answer. Are we, as the viewer, to respond in awe to the forces of technology and innovation, or are we being asked to quiver with the anxiety that these forces are at any moment susceptible to collapse?
Regardless of the question Collateral Damage introduces, it is clear that the artist is more invested in the process of asking than the answer. Starting with materials and technique, the work holds evidence of a staggering investment of time and energy by way of renderings that are immediate and irreversible.
There is no mistake in the materials Stubblefield chooses; although they are salvaged, they are not without intentionality. Giant sheets of plexiglass, scratched from prior use and discarded, never to degrade, are the perfect foundation for mark-making that is also “permanent.” A Sharpie marker is the gold standard in highly accessible, widely utilized, indelible mark-making. The combination of discarded plastic given a second life and the intentional use of a marker that can be found in every garage, classroom, desk drawer, and back alleyway provides the work with a false sense of accessibility. There is little hint of the massive amounts of research, planning, and firsthand experiences that go into each composition.
These are not only portraits of power plants, they are also stories of investment, hope, heartbreak, and longing for shelter against the forces of an expanding universe that refuses to give up its secrets.
DOWNFALL, 2025 | 48 1/2 x 96 inches | Sharpie marker on discarded plexiglass
Collateral Damage is more observation than opinion, investigation than protest, not for lack of containing inconvenient truths but rather a well-executed example of the time-honored tradition of the artist organizing a series of observations into visual structures that can be observed and contemplated in an undefined timeframe. Returning to the concept of relativity and perception, Stubblefield draws from Gestalt psychology, the idea that the mind wants to organize visual stimuli into meaningful shapes and forms or “gestalts,” the German word for form or configuration. As layered and dense as the presentation of her source material may be, there is always the opportunity to step back and observe the work as both representative and abstract. One can recognize that a place is being faithfully represented amongst other visual decisions that invoke a sense of chaos or destruction. This comes from the artist’s interest in entropic patterns or the amount of disorder or randomness to be observed in any system, particularly human society, and the drive for survival against nature. The mark-making has meaning and stands as equal to the subject matter in what Stubblefield wants to convey.
Returning to science and emotion, it is the tenacity with which humans continue to live on the earth in the places we decide that is often the driving force of technological innovation. Whether it be in the sprawling suburbs of the California desert under constant threat of fire, the plains of Kansas pulled up into swirling cyclones, cities slightl below sea level, homes hanging from cliffs, or high-rises designed to sway as the earth shakes, we are motivated by our anxieties as well as our dreams. Regardless of how many times our innovations fail us, we are game to try again. Hope springs eternal, and the consequences of that wishful thinking are the collateral damage that Stubblefield references in her work. When human inclinations become too baffling to be believed, these works are moving investigations of power and loss, hope in the face of crushing realities from which no one is immune. We are connected through our fragility.
ALTERNATING CURRENT (AC), 2025 | 96 x 144 inches | Sharpie marker on discarded plexiglass