As climate change continues to threaten our planet, and concerns about sustainability and the environment become more urgent, artists like⁠ Katerina Gribkoff⁠ are using their work to explore new ways of thinking about our relationship with nature. Through her practice, which blends traditional techniques with innovative approaches to growing and creating, pushing the boundaries of what it means to be an artist in the modern world.

Bio

Katerina Gribkoff is a visual artist based in western Ireland. In 2017, she received a BFA in Drawing from the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York. She is currently a PhD candidate at the Burren College of Art and the University of Galway. Her research aims to find alternative, liveable ways of making and creating in tandem with growing systems, and directly links her studio practice with a dye and pigment garden in the Burren.

Her work includes foraging and growing to make dyes and inks, biodegradable soft sculptures, photography, and plant support systems. Her research moves through contemporary eco-critical themes, systems thinking (permaculture) and new materialist studies.

THE GARDEN, YEAR ONE: MARCH TO OCTOBER 2022

The fabric that makes up this quilt was dyed with plants grown from seed in the artist’s garden. It tells the story of the care and work put into the garden from March to October of 2022, from building the beds (as referenced by the wooden top), to collecting seeds and drying plants (shown in the bottom panel and fringe).

Quilting mirrors many of the repetitive acts of care performed in the garden during growing season. Watering, picking, touching, and pulling outside, turns to sewing, smoothing, pinning, and cutting inside the studio. The plants abstractly depicted are weld, coreopsis, and madder, and the different rows and bunches represent the summer and autumn harvests of each plant: coreopsis flowers were plucked in three rounds, while only a small amount of madder root was dug-up.

The quilt is approx. 3.2m x 0.9m (10.5ft x 3ft).

Images courtesy of Katerina Gribkoff.