I asked artist Katherine Frazer some questions. This is what she answered.

Katherine on how she arrived at digital collage as her practice -
Growing up, I liked experimenting with Photoshop, making different banners for websites I’d made. Collage felt like a natural jumping-off point from my work in graphic design. My background is in graphic design and a lot of design work is collage, where you combine photographs with text and other elements. It started with just tweaking things in Photoshop, being able to essentially explore things in a more free form, where you're repeating the same elements over and over again, to get something new. That part is interesting to me, just taking something to its extreme.

For example, if you have one small photo, what happens if you repeat it ten times? What happens if you repeat it 500 times? Will you end up with something surprising, different and a little unpredictable? I feel like I’m driven by this simple idea of just taking something and working with it forever.

Katherine on the early web3 space -
In 2021 it felt like a caffeine-induced frenzy that was very chaotic. In terms of collectors, it was almost kind of fun having a bunch of anonymous collectors. It felt very gamified in some way. Now I feel like the sugar rush has passed and it's more about longevity and interest in the space. I'm excited about the long-term prospects. I can’t help thinking of the Gartner Hype Cycle. Maybe we're in the Trough of Disillusionment? Once you get through that, it's only up from there.

Katherine on the importance of collaboration and community -
I'd say that historically, my collaborations have been between me and the software I use. I rely heavily on the align and distribute tools, as well as copy and paste. While I don't collaborate often with other people, I do find the community invaluable, and a big source of support. There's no guidebook for being an artist, and few venues to validate work, so I deeply appreciate people being encouraging.

Katherine on Father's End (Current) (2024) and Lie in Wait (2024) -
Lately, I've been interested in water imagery, and how it could relate to themes and visual motifs that have influenced me from video games. Water can have healing properties, or often water levels are the most difficult, coming in the form of rapids, poison swamps, oxygen-scarce environments, etc. The duality of this peaceful setting with imminent demise is very interesting to me. It makes me think about how when I work with flowers in an IRL flower arrangement, the flowers seem to be so full of life, but actually, they're on the path to dying, and the decay is exacerbated by the water the flowers reside in. What really kills flowers quickly is the bacteria that fester in the water they're stored in. The water provides nourishment for the plant, but it's also killing it.

Bio
Designer and artist Katherine Frazer subverts everyday technology, developing creativity applications in popular tools like Apple's Keynote, Pages, Numbers, Freeform, and Figma. Her practice involves using these tools for unconventional purposes, creating collages, animations, and digital paintings inspired by ikebana and iPhone. Frazer's work, housed in the Rhizome Artbase and Museum of Crypto Art collection, contributes to a personal lore using self-made digital, photographic, and photogrammetric assets. A 2021 New Museums' Net Aesthetics panel speaker, Frazer, a Carnegie Mellon University graduate, resides in Brooklyn, New York.

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Cover image: Katherine Frazer, Lie In Wait, 2024