The Flowers of Kate Blairstone
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Kate Blairstone, War Helmet
Kate Blairstone, Flowers, opens Saturday, May 18th, from 4pm to 8pm at birdloft, 2915 South 12th Street, Tacoma 98405
The Flowers of Kate Blairstone
Kate Blairstone is a master of vibratory visual, a-aural jazz. Her language is color and pattern translated through flowers. Do we need more flowers. There was already a Georgia O’Keeffe. A Beverly Hallam. Plenty of flower hunters among us all along and still. But Blairstone’s work is new, relentless, at times radical, at times oddly cool-ly vintage. She somehow manages to be more current than timeless while describing flowers. She starts with brushes then loads the hand-printed line work into her laptop and begins layering more digital on top. Some of her Instagram posts spell out her process in hypnotic, quick repeating constructions.
Kate Blairstone has only began working in her current media in earnest, full-time, for a few years now. Already, as of earlier this spring, her work is side-by-side with that of Kyler Martz and Shepard Fairey, at the State Hotel in Seattle. She recently did the cover art for the inaugural issue of Kitchen Table Magazine, nailing in blues, maroons and golds the Pacific palette. She designed everything from the menu illustrations to the entry tile mosaics at Solo Club in Portland, the recent reincarnation of the former Wildwood Restaurant, an early miner of Pacific Northwest ingredients.
Ethos and ambiance underpinning rigorous composition. Structural weightlessness. Plain unfettered delight. If you are not unhinged momentarily in the smallest good way by her work - well, you might just be stuck in winter. Come get un-stuck at birdloft this Saturday. That is the only risk in trying her first gallery art show. Kate Blairstone’s flowers are amazing, inspiring, beyond sound. She’ll be showing less than a dozen images, each a signed hyper-limited edition print run of ten. One run will be printed on three-foot by three-foot silk - try a one-ounce scarf.