Katrina Coombs starts conversations with textile and fibre art
Published:Sunday | February 12, 2023 | 12:26 AMKrysta Anderson - Staff Reporter
According to her mother, she spent her formative years drawing on the walls. With no recollection of those acts of expression, she recalls making mud pots, sculpting the dirt into unique shapes, only for them to lose their forms to the rain. Today, she is known and respected as a visual artist, educator, and curator. Today, The Sunday Gleaner gets to the fibre of Katrina Coombs’ artistic being.
The textile and fibre artist told us: “My work is a multisensory engagement. I want to get my work to a place where it becomes a vehicle for women’s voices and experiences, speaking her truth and bringing the hushed conversation to light. For me, it’s how do we create a space for women to be heard? And how do we create a space for men to come in?”
Coombs gives you a taste of enlightenment, awakening all the other senses of sight, smell, touch, and feel. “I wanted to do monumental sculptures and wall pieces. Textile was that medium. It was so durable. I can navigate through painting, I can paint with thread all the way up to building large sculptural installations, and I can dabble with performers. There are just so many possibilities,” she said enthused.
Her elevated approach to the visual-art form is evident in her emotionally stirring, thought-provoking, conversation-starting, and truly breathtaking masterpieces. Her collections, over the years, have gone on display for art lovers and newcomers to experience both locally and internationally.
In terms of her love for this specific style of art, her interest in macrame developed during her years at Meadowbrook High School. “I always had a knack for drawing. But as far as career paths go, I was leaning towards following in my mother’s footsteps of landscape design, branching out into architecture,” she said. That goal shifted with swift movement after discovering the enrollment of complex physics components.
Coombs attended Edna Manley College for the Visual and Performing Arts with high hopes that she would champion her area of expertise. Nothing could explain the dream deferred by the reality of basic approaches to textile art.
“I struggled at college from the beginning because I knew I didn’t want to do applied art, that is fashion or interior design. I wanted to do fine arts. I was able to weave into fibres and try to figure stuff out. At the time, the institution was one-track-minded in the need to turn the fabric into something practical like a sheet or curtain,” she said.
She shared that her lecturers didn’t necessarily understand her creative process or direction. But that didn’t deter her from expressing her innermost ideas. Coombs would draw on the veterans in her field to assist with envisioning the outcome and shedding light on the artistic journey. Since seeking and receiving that assessment, the artist has become the change she desired scholastically and professionally.
She was called to return to her college as a lecturer. And one of the beauties of becoming a teacher is having the ability to shift the narrative. Not only are her students more rounded when it comes to textile and fibre art, but they are also able to see their teacher breaking barriers and paving the way for them to follow. Some are even given the opportunity to get in on the action while studying.
When it came to her career, she learned as much as she could about understanding space as a curator, presenting the work of others in a way that gives it value. Her strategic movements of curating other works gave her a greater appreciation for all facets of art as well as an understanding of how she presents and engages with her work. The role also became a gateway to meeting and collaborating with established and new artists in the industry.
“I purposefully didn’t do my first solo show until 2020, when I was ready and able to pull a crowd who would be interested in my work,” Coombs confessed.
As a co-founder of Blaqmango Consultants, an art initiative that focuses on providing art shows for public viewing, she can promote the progression of fibre art here in Jamaica, giving a platform to those seeking to exhibit their unique talents. This is but her beautiful way of paying it forward.
So how does one juggle the life of a visual artist, teaching, and curating? Coombs’ response: “I do it because I love it. You just have to love it. I love what I do, all that I do. They are all aligned with art.”
Noting that all of her pieces hold a special place in her heart, we spoke about her previous exhibition at Sarasota Art Museum, I M(O)ther, which is the connection between the individual, independent identity, the matriarchal figure, who is relatable in some way, shape or form. If you’re not a mother, then you’re other. Women constantly other themselves, and men do the same in othering the gender, as objects of scrutiny. “It highlighted the issues related to the womb, but it was also a celebration of the woman,” she shared. It ran overseas for five months and was the most wonderful experience.
She pursued her master’s in creative practice at Transart Institute, which plays a pivotal role in her practice. “It gave a very diverse engagement. It wasn’t about being in a specific individual practice. It was more about having conversations with multiple artists in a room, working, creating, and not being limited to a medium. That opened my eyes to engage in any medium. I started bringing in metals, mirrors, pins, and needles to the literal work. It changed how I saw the artist practise and taught me not to limit the scale,” she said.
Coombs explained that there are limitations to how art is presented here in Jamaica based on the preconceived notion of how art should be bought. She was grateful for the learning experience that took her out of the frame and had her taking her dreams to the ceiling. That is how you make the audience a part of the work.
With a new showing of her work at The Hybridization Exhibition starting today and running for six weeks at CreativSpace in Downtown, Kingston, she hopes to continue on her mission to provide a platform that places textile and fibre art on the spectrum in Jamaica and around the world.