Synonym for Sunlight

Katharine L. DeLamater explores material and process in her work, playing with paper and textile to create multilayered forms in which mediums appear unfixed and mutable. She is interested in the traditional functionality of her materials, and in subsequently breaking away from these histories. Through complex and layered patterns, DeLamater distorts her mediums, removing each object from their originating purpose to ultimately produce beautiful, but functionless works of art.

In Synonym for Sunlight, DeLamater presents a new body of work produced over several years that is rooted in the artist’s long-held interest in textile goods. Through five distinct series, DeLamater incorporates physical textiles into her work, combining white organzas and twills with handmade pigmented cotton and abaca paper to build layered interactions that reconfigure the integrity of her materials. Juxtaposing fabric and pulp allows each medium to abstract or take on new meanings and behaviors that void the objects of their original purpose; DeLamater flattens traditionally flowing fabric or ripples and weaves traditionally flat paper. Freeing the materials from their need to be useful, as DeLamater describes it, she still preserves their true essences, maintaining semi-recognizable forms that are intended to elicit personal memories and ideas. Through variations in color, careful placement of textured cloth, and sweeping forms created in pulp paint, DeLamater constructs intimate moments that are specific and universal.

Through the exploration of these series of multiples, I expanded the distance(s) between materials and their function. I created physical shifts with fibers to propel shifts in meaning. Both papermaking and textile processes rely on unification - the simple integration of singular fiber into a larger matrix, suited to fulfill a purpose. These fibers can be interlaced tightly to create a taut surface, loosened to create an entrance, or unraveled to transform their function entirely.

Fiber and language rely on separation and spacing as much as each rely on connection and overlap. The potential breakdown of language and fiber - the semantic tangle, the dropped stitch- present opportunity for reconciliation. The attempt at reconciliation is an opportunity to revise, an invitation to mend, for a new outcome that is no longer the same as the original, but not all together different. In Synonym for Sunlight, I granted myself the freedom to clarify, to rephrase, and to get the syntax right.

- Katharine L. DeLamater

Katharine Lark DeLamater received her MFA with honors from the University of Iowa Center for the Book in 2020 and shortly thereafter was the 2020-2021 West Bay View Fellow at Dieu Donné Papermill. An Iowa Arts fellowship recipient, Katharine worked as a research assistant to Timothy Barrett at the Oakdale Paper Research Facility from 2018-2020. After first learning about hand paper making at Mount Holyoke College, she went on to intern at Pace Paper, Dieu Donné, and the Boston Paper Collective. Katharine has taught classes at The University of Iowa Center for the Book, Dieu Donné Papermill, The Morgan Conservatory, and Polka! Press. Her handmade paper works have been featured in art portfolios such as Hand Papermaking’s “Intergenerationality” and “The Language of Color” as well as Art and Literature Laboratory’s CSArt (2017). Her artists books are held in the special collections of Kenyon College, The Bainbridge Island Museum of Art, and private collections. Alongside teaching and artist collaborations, Katharine maintains her own artistic practice which includes papermaking, letterpress printing, and experimental bookbinding.