Life is the greatest distraction; yet the most fundamental requirement of existence. We wrap ourselves up in the smallest details of our lives in order to escape the crushing weight of a conscious reality. Relating matches to neurology, candle wax to recording time, or watermarked paper to external impressions on our identity, are all ways I express how my own perception and experience coalesce into ephemeral and imperfect systems that mark my memory of an event. These systems manifest through materials that surround me in daily life, ranging from worn relics to manufactured utensils, making nostalgia and innovation fundamental elements of the creation and reception of my work. As a transdisciplinary artist who fuses time honored methods of craft with digital fabrication, I endeavor to express the need for the human hand to remain firmly present in a digital age as technology changes our perception of and actions in contemporary life.

Katrina "Kat" Kauffman is an award-winning artist based out of Portland, who has just recieved her BFA in Craft at Oregon College of Art and Craft. She has work in the permanent collection of the Chicago Cultural Center and a bound book commission that belongs to the Library of Congress. Kauffman has shown during Art Basel and exhibited in galleries nationwide. She was most recently named as a finalist considered for the Windgate Fellowship, and had her piece, Span Brace Kneel sold at auction for $3000 at Art on the Vine. Past awards include an Arts for Life grant and an Honorable Mention from the Young Arts Council.

Kauffman finds inspiration in the systems that humans have developed to process and interact with the world around them, and how those systems, in turn, impress upon us.