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October Issue
2008
Plum Elements in Charleston, SC, Features
Works by Bobbi Kittner
Plum Elements in Charleston, SC, will present the exhibit, No. 822 Assembly Required, featuring works by award-winning designer and artist Bobbi Kittner, on view from Oct. 1 through Dec. 31, 2008.
Most homes have a drawer (might as well admit it, I do) that is simply a catch-all. In my house, it is called the "Drawer of Everything" where odds things go in the event that someday they will be needed or used. My drawer likely is born from family legends about Great Grandfather Schultz, who collected everything - nails, bits of string, even paint - actually catalogued it all to use. "Waste not want not" he purchased a home for each of his seven children.
Award-winning designer and artist Bobbi Kittner must have met Grandpa Schultz somewhere along the way. Her brilliant paintings and mixed assemblage not only recycle all those things you wished you had done something with, and make them some how more than they ever were before.
Kittner, based near Washington, DC, describes herself as always having "been a tinkerer." From a large family, she explained, there was always an assortment of "junk" available. After graduating from the University of Kansas, Kittner went to DC in pursuit of a journalism career. In the mid 1990s she started Kittner Design, graphic design firm.
Kittner didn't go back to her "tinkering" until after she became a mom. Inspired by a collage class, which introduced the world of assemblage and element manipulation, "someday" actually comes true for Kittner's drawer of everything items. She transforms the mundane into magical arrangements. Every item becoming the transformative piece it always hoped it would be.
These days, Kittner likes to think of her art as dialogue - with self, her children with that which surrounds and that she encounters. Rather than calling herself and artist and creating - she prefers to characterize it as an "explorer uncovering what lies beneath the grime of time, or even a pathfinder wondering through the chaos of the everyday." Through her process, she works to hear what is "yearning to be shaped and listened to."
"I'm very deliberate," Kittner explained, "but this soon gives way to the piece itself. Sometimes I'm flabbergasted and other times filled with wonder that these things I create, have a life all their own." Her creatures, like the wise yet cheery Big Star or the fun-loving and massive-hearted Jester have such bold personalities you cannot help but to feel like you are not seeing the pieces, but meeting them. Kittner's deft use of paintbrush and assembling open a new world of old things for others to explore. The places to which her imagination invites the viewer to follow, may seem easy to the uninitiated. But the "aha" of each one-of-a-kind piece reveals the true eye, heart and skill of creation and creator.
Plum Elements has displayed some of Kittner's
lively work since opening, but this will be her first solo show
in the Lowcountry. Other recent shows include a Juried Exhibition
at the Arts and Humanities Commission in Washington, DC.
For further information check our SC Commercial Gallery listings,
call the gallery at 843/727-3747 or e-mail at (info@plumelements.com).
Carolina Arts is published monthly by Shoestring Publishing Company, a subsidiary of PSMG, Inc. Copyright© 2008 by PSMG, Inc., which published Charleston Arts from July 1987 - Dec. 1994 and South Carolina Arts from Jan. 1995 - Dec. 1996. It also publishes Carolina Arts Online, Copyright© 2008 by PSMG, Inc. All rights reserved by PSMG, Inc. or by the authors of articles. Reproduction or use without written permission is strictly prohibited. Carolina Arts is available throughout North & South Carolina.