Our collaboration is also in celebration of National Hispanic Heritage Month – Katrina is a Panamanian-American textile artist based in Charlotte, NC. Most known for her Magnified Weavings, Katrina’s vibrant and playful soft sculptures utilize scale, texture, color, and touch to explore relationships between our physical environments and each other. She is influenced by her early works in mending with needle and thread, as well as the vivid natural landscapes and folk art of her home country of Panamá. Her works have been exhibited in galleries and museums throughout the U.S. She has been commissioned by clients such as Ally Bank and Marlette Funding and has works in the Fidelity Investments Boston permanent collection. Recently, she has participated in Spring Break Art Fair LA, and the Fiskars Village Biennale in Helsinki, Finland and is preparing for her upcoming Solo Exhibition with Abigail Ogilvy Gallery, MA in 2023. 

Weaving the knitted ‘noodles’ together amplifies their plush, round volume and tactile qualities, evoking a desire to touch and play. These forms create a collective sense of intimacy, warmth, joy and optimism. Careful attention is given to her choices of color and the ways they transform and overlap one another through the process of weaving. Influenced by the vivid natural landscapes and cultures of Panama, where she was born, and the history of textiles and their intrinsic connection to humanity, Katrina’s study of scale, texture, color and form plays with how we relate to our physical environments, ourselves and each other.

I hope her work brings as much joy and beauty into your lives as it has mine – an important reminder that there are really cool people out there making beautiful things.

~ xo Rachelle