Birthday Cake

Kat Blouch

Interview by C. VanWinkle

September 12, 2022

What was the prompt we sent you? Can you describe it for me?

You sent me a surreal picture of a giraffe. It had the body of a mushroom and then the background was all this repeating pattern of lungs or something. It reminded me of one of my favorite artists and animators, Jan Švankmajer. If you haven't seen them, I highly recommend his movies “Faust,” “Alice,” and “Little Otik.” Those are probably my favorite movies. So, what I took from the piece was actually just the surreal aspect of it because I love surrealism.

It was weird.

I kind of hate saying that I'm trying to unlearn what I learned in school, because once you learn art in school, it's in you forever. But you can use it to create work that maybe you've never done before and it allows you to have that. I use a lot of spray foam in my work, and I feel that it allows me to do just that, to take me back to when I was a kid and my aunt was a kindergarten teacher. I grew up in Brooklyn and she would come visit us. She would make a type of clay with dough and glue and so we would do homemade Play-Doh. I remember playing with that and making all these weird shapes, and when you're a kid you never think about whether you're good or bad. You’re just like, “I'm just making shit and this is awesome. And I'm awesome because I'm a kid. I don't have to worry about what the art world's going to think or that kind of validation.” When I saw that piece, I immediately picked up on these things put together. I always think of collage work like that. Just putting things together, like a kid, like Sid from Toy Story. Remember, he would put all the toys together. I had spray foam and I thought, “I'm gonna try this one time,” and I loved it. It reminded me of the old Play-Doh that I used to play with as a kid. So that's how I drew the inspiration from that drawing.

I love that. The thing I like about spray foam is that, even if you’re making something relatively flat, it's going to be somewhat three-dimensional, if not sculptural. That's interesting.

Right! I just started using spray foam because I saw a piece by Nicole Eisenman. It looked like she made it with spray foam and I thought that looked very interesting, so I did my first piece. It’s called “Insomnia” and it’s about my battle with sleep deprivation and what insomnia feels like. I used spray foam, glitter, jewels, little pearl things. And puff paint, I like using puff paint. I love texture.

Where did the imagery come from in this piece?

After staring at the giraffe piece for a while, it hit me that it reminded me of Švankmajer. I went back to his old, short animation called “Jabberwocky,” and I was like “I got it. Boom.” I just happened to start cleaning my studio, and I saw these fingers from a broken mold of my hand from a previous project. They’d been sitting there for like two years. It just landed in my lap.

I always play music or something in the background when I work, like music or something. Sometimes I put YouTube on and it just goes off on its own. I start watching, you know, short video clips from The Office, and then all of a sudden I'm on the deep dark web. It was talking about aging and all these bad plastic surgeries that celebrities get. I was wondering why people are people so afraid of aging. You can't stop the process, you know. And dealing with the stuff with my dog, it’s so inevitable, but people get all this surgery done to hold onto that youth. No matter what you do, no matter how healthy you eat, no matter how much plastic surgery you get, you're going to get old and die. You cannot stop the aging process. There's no Fountain of Youth. It's a part of life, and that's what motivates me to create. If I don't create now, then I'm never gonna get that chance. Every day that you wake up is another day that you can work on your goals.

I absolutely feel that. I've done a lot of waiting until I'm “ready,” and I'm finished doing that. We waste way too much time waiting for opportunity or courage or convenience.

Right. I'm still trying to figure it out, but I'd rather live knowing that at least I tried than live with that shoulda-woulda-coulda and go down into a really deep, dark depression.

No wonder you approach art like a kid! What else is this thing made of?

I used spray foam, there's some plaster of my fingers, jewels, puff paint, and resin. I finished it off with resin. Oh and glitter. I have a drawer full of glitter. I'm a hoarder of art supplies and I thought I wouldn’t use it. I think some of the glitter has been here for like five years.

You hoarded those fingers for such a long time. They were waiting for their day and their day has come.

I was going to use the hands, but it would have made the piece too heavy for the wall.

How does this piece relate to your other work?

It's the idea of play. I never really go into the studio with a set plan thinking, “This is what my work is about.” My work is such a hodgepodge of things. Everyday life is a memory, it could just be a person. I did a piece – I don't say it loud because I don't want the other animals to get jealous – of my favorite pet. A portrait of my cat, Rex. I guess the one thing that connects all of them is the texture and the stories behind them. It's all something that relates to me or everyday life.

With the birthday cake piece, I wanted to do something different from the stuff that I normally make. When I saw the piece that you sent me, I liked the repetition, so I echoed that in the repeated patterns in the texture. Originally, I was going to pipe the paint on there because I have piping bags and different tips, but I decided to use the spray foam to make it look almost like frosting that someone could dip their finger into.

It looks like you can!

It is soft because I did not put the Epsilon on top of the foam this time. I wanted it to keep that soft look and texture to it.

Do you like to work with patterns?

You know, I have a love/hate thing sometimes with patterns, but I love the patterns in this specific piece. I like random patterns instead of set control. I think that's me trying to break the habit of perfection. I like work that looks messy, but then when I create myself, I’m like ,”Okay, this has to be perfect.” It’s a habit. Even when I'm painting, I'm think, “It has to fit on these circles very neatly” and I'm like, “No, no it doesn't. Stop telling yourself that.” It’s that school mentality. I feel like the difference between going to school and being self-taught is that when you go to school, you want that good grade, so you’ve got to make sure everything is neat. I want that A, so sometimes I have that mentality. I’m 42! I haven't been in college for a long freaking time, so why do I give a shit about the grade?? It's okay, I can be imperfect. Look at Picasso’s paintings. Look at Louise Bourgeois. It's okay to be messy.

It's more interesting.

Yes, exactly. And that's why I like working with spray foam. It’s so unpredictable. You can think you got the right pressure. But nope! [makes exploding sound] Oh well! That's what I'm getting! It's so freeing. Oh, that's the shape you're going to make? Okay.

Any piece that I make is always going to be fun. That's why I love using fluorescent colors. But when you hear the story behind it, there’s an ugliness to it. It's ugly, but it's pretty. You don't know what to make of it because it looks like a kid did it. And I’m like, “Exactly!” [both laugh] When you're a kid, you think more freely. How many kids sing terribly? But they don't think they sound terrible; they think they sound great.

Now that you have done this, what is your advice to someone else who might be approaching this project?

Just have fun with it. Don't overthink it, which happened to me in the beginning. Even if it's just a color that inspires you from it, take your time with it. Sit there, look at it, something will spark and then just go with it. But I think the most important thing is absolutely to have fun. You're asking people to explore a part of themselves that they didn’t even know they had. There’s a piece in my studio that I haven't touched in weeks because I'm waiting for it to tell me what it wants to be. And I think that if anyone goes into this project, that's what they need to do. Just sit with it, let it talk to you, and have fun.

I will say that if anyone ever feels like they need the most expensive things and name brand stuff, listen, one can of spray foam costs me like five bucks. You don't need to have expensive things to make great art. You can make the most amazing art with the cheapest materials. Don't ever let anyone make you feel like you're not a valid artist because you're using what you have. That does not make you any less of an artist than anybody else who has like 200,000 followers. That don't mean shit. It does not mean that you're good.

Making art and working social media are two entirely different things.

Especially for anyone who's in their 30s or 40s, comparing themselves to these young kids. Don’t worry about that. Just do you, get out there, do your thing. Don't worry yourself getting 10,000 self-help books and “how to be an artist” books. You don't need that shit because it’s all common knowledge or things that you can get for free online. You know what you need to do. You don't need a book. You don't need anybody to validate your worth. Get out there and do it. Put your big boy pants and big girl panties on, hike ‘em up, and just go out there, because ain't nobody gonna bring you that success but you.

Call Number: C80VA | C81VA.bloBi

Katherine Blouch (1980, Brooklyn NY, United States) is an artist who works with a variety of media. Choosing mainly spray foam, she creates personal moments and daily life. She develops re-imagined forms from her childhood memories and everyday life.