A Love Letter to My City- City Hall Collage

Kate Fauvell (b.NYC) is a contemporary artist. Kate constantly takes pictures as a means of understanding and documenting the world around us. She use these images to create photo-based collage paintings.She cuts and tear photographs into pieces and these torn pieces replace a paint brush her primary drawing tool. Born in 1979, Kate has a BFA from Binghamton and an MFA from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Fauvell has had solo exhibitions at Binghamton University and Rush Arts Foundation. She has been included in exhibitions on Odetta Digital, New York, NY; The Painting Center, New York, NY; Every Woman Biennial, London, UK; Silvermine Galleries, New Canaan, CT; Google Headquarters, New York, NY, BRIC Arts, Brooklyn, NY; Ethan Cohen Gallery, Beacon, NY; Scope Art Fair, Miami, FL; among many others. The artist was recipient of the Pollock Krasner Grant, New York, NY; Anonymous Was a Woman Grant, New York, NY; the Artist Fellowship, New York, NY; Rauschenberg Foundation Grant, New York,NY a grant from the US Swiss Embassy, Zurich, Switzerland to name a few. She has done residencies around the world including at Mass MoCA and at PRGR in Bern, Switzerland. Fauvell is a single Mom to Matti who is 4 and lives and works in New York, New York. As a native New Yorker, I’m accustomed to change. Over the course of my lifetime, its residents have transformed the city more times than I can count. That experience informs my art. I believe all things change and make art that alludes to this process. People and systems inspire me. I constantly take pictures as a means of understanding and documenting the world around us. I use these images to create photo-based collage paintings. I cut and tear photographs into pieces and these torn pieces replace a paint brush as my primary drawing tool. The fragmentation of the torn photos depict how I see our world systems—messy and broken. I break down existing structures and create new compositions. The physical act of my ripping up the photos alludes to the systemic issues pulling apart our society. Using photos of broken structures to rebuild our country I make new worlds that seek systemic justice and redefine beauty. I draw inspiration from those who came before me. In the words of Louise Bourgeois, “ “Art is restoration: the idea is to repair the damages that are inflicted in life, to make something that is fragmented... into something whole. “