Artist Katelyn Gould stirs up new projects

By SARAH LEHR

slehr@vindy.com

youngstown

Katelyn Gould is not interested in creating pretty artwork.

“There’s a lot of beautiful flower paintings out there, don’t get me wrong,” she said. “But that’s not want I want to do all day.”

Gould, who grew up in Campbell, now lives in Pittsburgh, where she is an art handler at the Andy Warhol Museum. She said that over the years she’s become less interested in the purely aesthetic value of art and more interested in art as a way to make people think.

“Katelyn won’t create something unless it serves a purpose or is about giving back to the world or righting a wrong in some way,” said Steph Neary, a Pittsburgh-based artist who has been friends with Gould for almost a decade.

Occasionally people have described Gould’s artwork as “creepy” or “disturbing,” though Gould said she doesn’t see it that way.

“I’ve always been drawn to darker artwork,” she admitted. “I know it’s not for everyone, and I’m totally fine with that.”

She laughed and said she’s always surprised when someone wants to buy her art. “I feel like my art isn’t the kind of thing that you’d see and think, ‘Oh, I want that for my living room.’”

Gould often draws vacant-eyed women. “I imagine these women as having become withdrawn and turned inward after so much of focusing on what everyone else was thinking about them,” she said.

Although her subjects are mostly female, at one point, Gould considered signing her pieces “K. Gould” so that her gender would be unknown.

“I try to avoid pigeonholing my artwork,” she said. “If a woman’s doing artwork, she’s a female artist, but a male artist is just an artist.”

Growing up, Gould said she knew of few female artists and never pictured herself making a career out of art.

“I want young people and young girls especially to see my artwork and think, ‘I could do that,’” Gould said.

Her pieces are usually black and white. She often draws from old photographs. She says she likes black and white artwork because it’s free from the distraction of color and feels more honest.

Gould, who also works with fabrics and found objects, favors simple drawings made with ballpoint pen and paper.

She started making pen drawings when she was a student and couldn’t afford fancier art supplies. She kept it up once she realized she liked the effect.

“I’m amazed by how Katelyn is able to create so much emotion from these scratchy pen drawings,” Neary said. “There’s a haunting allure to what she creates.”

Gould has a number of projects in the works. For example, when Gould was a teenager, one of her friends predicted that Gould would die at age 27.

After she turned 27 last October, Gould began creating one self-portrait every day to celebrate the fact that her friend’s prediction didn’t come true. The Mr. Roboto Art Project in Pittsburgh will exhibit that portrait series, titled “365 Deaths a Year,” on Oct. 2.

She also will be part of group exhibition, debuting Oct. 2, at the Soap Gallery in Youngstown.

Additionally, Gould and her friend Youngstown resident Marcy Gerhart are in the process of creating a series called “Birthday Parties,” in which Gould finishes pieces that Gerhart starts. The Image Box Gallery in Pittsburgh will exhibit “Birthday Parties” on Dec. 4.

Gould and Gerhart worked together in 2012 on a mural painted on the wall of a historic former company home in Campbell. Two of Gould’s grandparents grew up in the company homes, which were built in 1918 to house workers for the Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co.

Associate Professor Chris McCullough taught Gould and also employed her as an assistant while she studied art at Youngstown State University. McCullough said the mural in Campbell reflects Gould’s sparse, largely monochromatic style.

McCullough also described Gould as an unusually directed student. “There was a maturity to the way she approached her artwork,” McCullough said. “One she had a vision, you couldn’t force her to go in another direction.”