In the studio, July 2024

About

Everyday objects like face cream, aspirin, duct tape, and sponges are familiar, accessible, and easily overlooked. These items carry traces of larger systems: advertising, desire, convenience, consumption, and the ways we assign value to the things that surround us.

I use these objects as a starting point to explore how familiar materials can hold both practical function and emotional or cultural meaning. By changing contexts and relationships, I place familiar items in unexpected situations to shift perspectives of everyday life.

Working in mixed media, I choose materials for the qualities and associations they carry. Charcoal becomes smudged in the process of making, leaving traces of touch on the page that personalize mass-produced objects and shift how we see them. Paint moves between control and unpredictability, flowing across surfaces to create tension between what is contained and what escapes. Found objects, packaging, and reused materials are combined to create new relationships between what we are encouraged to want and what we choose to keep, need, and value.

PRESS

  • GLOBUS magazine Issue #6 - featuring CERRADO (Spring 2026)

  • Suboart Magazine, Featured artist. (November 2024)

  • Unicorn Factory: Featured artist, Instagram (January 2021)

  • David Brower Center: “Reimagining Progress: Artists in Conversation” (May 2014)

  • SF Gate: “Pick of the Week” October 24-27 by: Kenneth Baker (2013)

  • Handful of Salt: “Noticed: Your Store” by: Dominique Koudsi (September 2013)

  • The Bold Italic : “Turning Crazy Mission Rents into Art” by: Jennifer Maerz (October 2013)

  • Handful of Salt: “Kathryn Kenworth, quiet maverick” by: Regina Connell (Apri 2013l)

  • Kathryn Kenworth: Street Life by Stephen Maine (January 2012)

  • Mission 17: 2004-2009. A publication featuring exhibitions at MISSION 17. Introduction by Director Clark Buckner and a foreword by Glen Helfand (July 2009)

  • East Bay Express: “Five artist examine the Urban Matrix” by: DeWitt Cheng (February 2009)

  • Straw into Gold: Interview with Amy Conger: "What's it worth?" The potential of bartering and re-use in the business of art. - 16 December 2009

  • SF Weekly: "A Grab Bag of Art Shows plays Santa to the Masses" by: Traci Vogel (December 2009)

  • KQED's Forum: "Bay Area Bests" - 27 November 2009

  • Berkeley Daily Planet: "The Fake Real of 'Future Tense' at Kala Art" by: Peter Selz (July 2006)

  • SFist.com: "Between the Walls: Southern Exposure Gets Ready for a Major Metamorphosis" - May 22 2006

  • Artweek: Kathryn Kenworth at Humboldt State's First Street Gallery