Katie Stout
INSIDERS
© Katie Stout. Photo by Alex Trebus.
Much has changed in Katie Stout’s life in the past few years. She moved her studio out of Brooklyn, New York, to the Hudson Valley, where she lives and works in a nineteenth-century deconse- crated church, embracing a new form of domesticity and country life. In a 2022 interview with the New York Times, Stout proclaimed that “walking the line between beauty and vulgarity feels so good.”1 Yet one could make the case that in her recent work, she has embraced sublimity over raunch. Witness her Fruit Lady floor lamp series, with bronze foliate armatures, ceramic gourds, and Victorian- style glass shades. Each fruit appears to be on the verge of overripe, in an exploration of how beauty and decay can coexist as rotting makes room for new growth. Or take, in another example, her monumental Sphinx, a sculpture that was situated in the grand hall of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, guarding the entrance to their 2023 exhibition Parall(elles): A History of Women in Design.
Here the busty “girl” seen in her earlier works is transformed into an impressive winged lion inspired by the alabaster palace guards of the ancient city of Nimrud. Stout’s 2022 holiday windows for Hermès in New York are proof that she hasn’t lost the ability to go over the top with festive kitsch. But her furniture and sculptures have become painterly and pastoral, reflecting both her new surroundings as well as her maturation as an artist.
B. 1989, Portland, ME
Lives and works in Germantown, NY
CO720
Bench, 2024, Bronze, 61" (H) x 61" (W) x 34" (D). Courtesy of the artist, photo by R & Company.