Katie Barrie
Years spent camping and hiking in the wilderness across the
United States has led me to consider landscapes in new ways—
particularly in relation to land management, park infrastructure,
and humans’ curation of public land to fit their needs. Yosemite
is known for Half Dome as much as its summertime traffic jams;
the Grand Canyon now hosts a glass-floor pavilion; and more than
two dozen national monuments are currently under review to see
if they may be better used for logging and mining. I am intrigued
by which areas are slotted for development, what land is seen as a
landmark, and what is given the gift of being labeled “wilderness.”
My practice is a meditation on the history of America’s wild lands
and the structures, both organic and manmade, found within
them. Rooted in abstraction, my work makes a gentle nod to
minimalism by breaking landscapes down to their simplest forms.