episode twenty-eight | kathryn polk

Published 27 November 2019

Miranda Metcalf  Hello print friends, and welcome to the 28th episode of Pine Copper Lime (Hello Print Friend), the internet's number one printmaking podcast. I'm your host, Miranda Metcalf. I release an episode every two weeks, and on the off weeks, I publish an article on the Pine Copper Lime website, which features images and maybe a bit more information about the artist I'm going to interview. I have this theory, print friends, that whenever anyone tells you they have an opportunity for you, they're actually going to be asking you to do something for them. That being said, I really do have a couple of great opportunities for you this week. First, in celebration of Pine Copper Lime (Hello, Print Friend) reaching 20,000 followers, the good people of Awagami are offering all you lucky people 20% off your entire purchase at their online store. Awagami has been making handmade washi paper in Japan for eight generations, which is to say, they know a thing or two about quality. I've put a link to their website in the show notes and you can get 20% off between now and the 15th of December with the offer code PCL20%. Just use it at the Pay Pal checkout. Second, if you listened to the last episode, you'll remember me telling you all about the wonderful event which is Print Austin. Among other things, they host an incredible print exchange, open to anyone anywhere in the world, and right now you can get $5 off the entry fee with the offer code PCL5OFF. Use it between now and the 15th of December. That is two fun print deals for you lovelies, so don't say I never did anything for ya. Also, can we please talk about our amazing patrons over on Patreon just for a second? Every time someone comes on board to offer support, big or small, it makes my millennium. You are wonderful humans, every one of you. This past week, Jesus de la Rosa joined the party over on Patreon at the Pine Copper Lovefest level. And I just want to say, thank you Jesus. You're amazing. I love you. If you ever need someone to pick you up at the airport, or read your updated artist statement, or watch your dog over the weekend, or help you sort your recycling, I'm here for you. Way to show your support. Printmaking forever, shun the non believers, join the party. My guest this week is Kathryn Polk. And no, don't adjust your headphones, people. You heard right. Our patron saint of lithography has joined me. And let me tell you, she does not disappoint. We're going to talk about growing up in a church going household in Memphis, her multi-decade hiatus from art making, and when she returned to it in her 50s, as well as how she came to develop her incredible aesthetic. So sit back, relax, and prepare to be drawn into a Tennessee mountain trance with Kathryn Polk. Hey, Kathryn, how's it going?

Kathryn Polk  Oh, hey, it's going great. Just took a little break out of the studio and thought I would talk to you for a minute.

Miranda Metcalf  Thank you so much for joining me. This is the first recording I'm doing that is post-one year anniversary of the podcast. 

Kathryn Polk  Oh, congrats! Wow, that sounds great! Amazing. So you did it on Halloween a year ago?

Miranda Metcalf  Since I'm in Australia, it's November 1. So we're a little bit ahead. 

Kathryn Polk  Okay. All right. Wow, that is amazing. Yeah, I checked you guys out and it's quite exciting. It's a great group of people you've spoken with so far. And I'm so honored to be a part of this. It's pretty flattering. Thank you.

Miranda Metcalf  Well, you were definitely on my list kind of from the beginning, when Tim and I were first sitting down and thinking about, 'Okay, who do we want to talk to?' So I think it feels very appropriate that I finally got you on now and we can chat. So this is great. I know your work by reputation, and I think by mutual friends and acquaintances and colleagues, but of course, also SGCI. But just for anyone who's listening who might not be as familiar with you, would you go ahead and let us know who you are, where you are, and what you do?

Kathryn Polk  Sure. My name is Kathryn Polk, it's my middle name. I can always tell if someone's notifying me by my first name, that it's not a friend. But it confuses people because I use Ella as my first name quite a bit for business, or working with banking or anything like that. But anyway, it's Kathryn Polk, with a K. And originally, I'm from Memphis, Tennessee. I was born there. And that was a long time ago. That's where I met Andy Polk. And we sort of have moved around a bit, from Tennessee to North Carolina, and then to Indiana. He went to grad school, and I followed him to grad school at Indiana University. And then we went to Tucson, Arizona. So we've sort of been back and forth. And now we're back in Indiana, in a small town called Solsberry. And it's out in the country, really far out, so far down a gravel road, take a right at the concrete factory, and you're there. So it's really over the hills and through the woods, but we love it. Very contrasted to living in Tucson, Arizona, where we moved from, and it's also very different. So we're adjusting to the weather and things like that, like it's pretty cold for us right now, today. Other than that, we've moved our press, and our press name is L Vis Press. And that's because I was born in Memphis, it seemed appropriate.

Miranda Metcalf  Cute! You know, I have always wondered how to say it.

Kathryn Polk  Well, you spell it differently. We didn't want to do it E-L-V-I-S, but we do capital L Vis for L Vis Press. And we kind of lay low, because when we told people that, they started sending us all these Elvis memorabilia. We said, 'No, no, it's not that kind of thing.' But we just felt we had to do it because of the Memphis connection. So now we're printing just about all day long. And I just finished printing an edition of prints, I'm curating them now. So it's pretty convenient to have in your studio about 20 feet away from my house. So it's our dream, I think. Probably the last stop, I guess, is what you might call it.

Miranda Metcalf  Yeah. And what brought you from Tucson to the rural country life? That's a pretty big move, because you guys were in Tucson for a while, correct?

Kathryn Polk  Yeah, it was over 30 years. So we were fairly well acclimated to the desert. And I think my age - I have to be honest, I was born in the '50s. And not many people say that anymore. We really wanted to make a decision to be closer to our family. And we have two children, a son and a daughter, our son's in Chicago and our daughter's in Bloomington, Indiana. So that's only eight miles from the town, and that way we can be closer to family because Arizona was so far away that it would be twice a year, believe it or not - I mean, I know you're in Australia, but it's harder to just drop over when you're three days' drive [away].

Miranda Metcalf  One of the things that my husband and I talk about, because of course, we're both American and both of our families are in the states, is that honestly, being in Sydney, we still see them about once a year. It's kind of just like being across the country in a way, because America is so large and it's so hard to get time off and funds to do the travel and that distance is real and it can be hard to be separated.

Kathryn Polk  It's not as central. And that's so funny that you were from Tucson for a minute. I guess you were there three or four years. Yeah, we were there.

Miranda Metcalf  Yeah, we must have crossed over, definitely.

Kathryn Polk  We must have missed seeing each other in the hall somehow. Yeah, Tuscon's a beautiful, bizarre place. In many ways, it's so surreal to live there. And I had oriented a lot of my work based around a lot of the survival icons of living in a desert. And so when I moved, I sort of had to shift some of my thinking and my work, because my work is all about the narrative and the things that surround me, the environment, as well as women, but I always like to take into consideration... for example, I determined that my totem was the Cactus Wren when I was in Arizona, because I would always look at the flora and the fauna. And I realized that there is this amazing bird, the Cactus Wren, that makes its nest in the cholla cactus, and it's so indicative of survival. It's a harsh environment, but very secure in that it's protected itself with the things that are very off-putting to any other creatures. And so I really love the nature of this bird. Anyway, that's one example of one of the many things that I adopted when I was in Arizona, and some of the symbolism I would use, like the prickly pear. So when I moved here, it was a whole big shift in environment, as well as [the] community was different because we're so isolated. And I think we had an apartment before we bought our house. And the insects that presented themselves to me, I had never seen it in my life. It was pretty intimidating. And I thought, okay, we had our scorpions in Arizona. And here we have this thing, I guess it was something like a centipede. I don't even know what it was. But it presented itself to me the first night I was in Indiana again, and so it had to show up in my work, of course. And it represents a lot of things. So I like to put a lot of little centipedes in my work now.

Miranda Metcalf  That's really interesting, because I was pretty intimidated by the insect visitors when I moved to Tucson. I remember really distinctly, one night, I was working - I was there for graduate school, so I'm there working late - and I'm at my desk and I just see this insect, maybe about as long as my thumb, maybe about half as wide. Some kind of beetle type creature just crawling up the wall. And I just remember thinking like, what now, Arizona, what now?

Kathryn Polk  Yeah, my first night, my first day in Arizona, we were moving in and a bark scorpion crawled out in the guest bedroom that we had, and the same very night, there was a tarantula on our porch. And I was freaked out, because I had two smaller children when we moved here, and I thought, is this place safe? And it was sort of like, oh, what have we done now? But we were fine. You know, you just sort of survive, and I think just like everything, they don't want to have anything to do with you for the most part. And so you just kind of keep your peripheral going. Watch for them. One other thing that presented itself when I moved to Indiana was I had this thing, this horrible rash, on my hands right down by my wrists, and I thought, oh my stars! What on earth? And it was frightening. And it apparently was happening repeatedly, on and off, and finally we realized it was in streaks and it was poison ivy that was all over the property. And I was gathering wood for the fireplace, for kindling and stuff, and I was getting poison ivy all over me. And I must be more reactive than my husband Andy. And it's just like, okay, these centipedes, and poison ivy, what else? Just bring it on. But the poison ivy is now in my work, and that's usually the way it works. So I think it's there for some reason, for my inner personal growth or something. I don't know.

Miranda Metcalf  Cuz you were saying that you grew up in Tennessee, so growing up there, were you outside a lot? Because you're talking a lot about this interaction you're having with nature. Were you an outdoor kid, were you an artsy kid, tell me a little bit what that was like?

Kathryn Polk  I was very active outdoors. And I had all these insects and plants, similar to these in Indiana, but I think being transplanted all that time in Arizona for over 30 years, I'd forgotten my instincts and to avoid things. As a small child, though, I was very average. I wasn't pretty, I wasn't anything special, I didn't feel, with the exception maybe that art became sort of a tool for me to kind of communicate very early on. And I mean, as early as three, I was drawing quite a bit, and my mother was an artist. And I admired her a lot and would watch her draw. And because of this religious part, she drew at her church, and would do Bible stories and draw them while she told the stories. I was just fascinated by the whole idea of it. Of course, I translated that to doing 45 record songs and drawing to those, rock and roll, which probably really disturbed her. But anyway, I think it was watching her draw as a young child. Everything... I played with my food, I would personify everything, like numbers and silverware, everything had gender. It was weird. I guess my imagination was different from my brothers and sister. And I was left alone a lot. Not alone alone, there was actually someone there working in our house. But my parents weren't there quite a bit. So I was left on my own to entertain myself. And the other thing I think that might relate to my being an artist is - and this is gonna sound so negative about religion. It's not my intention. I think people have to believe the way they want. I believe in that total freedom - but I was taken to church a lot. And sitting still was not my thing. And being quiet was not my thing. But I found that to kind of get through a lot of this, I drew on everything, or sketched, at a very early age to kind of help pass the time, if you know what I'm saying. So I would manage to draw on everything that I could get my hands on, because I had difficulty sitting still. Anyway, I know that it did sort of open doors for me in elementary school. And then especially on up to high school. So where I felt I may not have been as academic as my peers, I think I could definitely draw, I could communicate that way. It really helped me a lot.

Miranda Metcalf  I think I hear a lot of artists talk about how art, and just the ability to draw, was really a way to connect with people when they were younger. Particularly if [they], like a lot of us, were just kind of like a weird little kid.

Kathryn Polk  I really was.

Miranda Metcalf  Little kids, they've got that almost animal instinct of like, 'Oh, they're different.' They can kind of smell it, you know? It's a way to kind of bridge that, though, is they're like, 'Well, but she can draw, or he can do whatever.' And I think that that positive feedback, when maybe we're not getting a lot of positive feedback for other areas of our life, really fuels dedication that can last a lifetime.

Kathryn Polk  Yeah, it probably put all my focus on the thing that I got attention for. But I felt it was somewhat intuitive, too, and it was self-satisfying. As well as maybe getting me through things, it felt like it was cathartic in a way. It would help me cope. If things weren't going my way, I just drew all the time. So I could kind of lose myself in this whole world I was always making. And I did that, I had an imagination. It got sculptural. Anytime I played, I built not just a little thing, I built a massive something. It kind of stood out in the neighborhood. I think people came by to participate in my events. It was that kind of imagination where I just was kind of an overstatement for kids. I don't know if I was overcompensating for the fact that I was very plain. We didn't have a lot of money, where I think there was peer pressure for nice clothes or owning things. We didn't have that. So I had hand me downs. And I think they were hand me downs to my sister who gave me her hand me downs. So it was quite a few out of date outfits, where the elastic had worn out. My pants were always falling down.

Miranda Metcalf  And you mentioned drawing to 45s. And I know that music is still a part of your practice, like the actual physical art making. Is that right? 

Kathryn Polk  Oh my god, yeah. How do you know that? 

Miranda Metcalf  Oh, I did some reading on you, Kathryn.

Kathryn Polk  Well, I've gotta wind up - I am wound up anyway, I am a pretty wound up grown up. It's pretty amazing that I've survived this long. But it's like, when I work, I need everything working... it's almost like orchestrated chaos, if that's possible. I've got to have a pace that keeps me going or keeps me getting this particular task I'm doing done. Whether it's tearing paper, grinding stones, printing, cranking through the press. It's nice to have the right music at the same time.

Miranda Metcalf  So you've talked a bit about how you were always drawing, how you had that kind of influence of seeing your mother draw and really using art and making to connect with people, and I think one of the things that stands out [in] your work is your incredible draftsmanship. It's really, really beautiful and really distinctive. But you came to lithography a bit late in your practice, or I shouldn't say late, but later than some artists do. And I think anyone who sees your lithographs [thinks] you must have been just like a fish to water. But it wasn't until 2002 that you started making, is that right?

Kathryn Polk  Yeah, it's complicated. And I don't know how much time we have, but I'll try to say it quickly. I took a long sabbatical from art. When I married Andy, I started working to sort of pay for things when he was in grad school. And so I got a job as an illustrator for a local newspaper, illustrating... I think at the time, it wasn't budget store fashion, but it was actually things like mattresses and stuff. So I drew strange things, but I could draw very fast. And I adapt to things pretty quickly. And no one does newspaper ads the way they used to, except in New York and LA. But I did that for a short while. And then I started moving into art direction, because the people that were telling me how to do things and what to do, sometimes I didn't agree with how I was being told to do something. So I figured the way to change that was to take their job somehow or become what they were. And so I kept moving up that ladder and went from illustrator to art director to creative director, and then ultimately - this is the one that surprises everybody - I was president of a company.

Miranda Metcalf  Really?

Kathryn Polk  Did you know that?

Miranda Metcalf  I did not know that.

Kathryn Polk  So for about 30 years, indirectly, from the illustrator all the way up to running this company. It was called Madden Media in Tucson, Arizona. You've probably heard of them. Yeah, I ran Madden Media. I was president of Madden Media. And we did back end database solutions for Fortune 500 companies, which is hard to say in itself, but I had come so far away from doing anything creative. It was very much like a zombie in business, and high stress, a lot of pressure, I wasn't even doing creative. I was working with clients a lot. So I was pretty starved for something for my soul. And I asked Andy, I said, 'I don't want to do this anymore as of today.' I said, 'Could you meet me at a restaurant with the owner?' - the owner of the company was Kevin Madden - and I said, 'I'm going to resign. And I just don't know if I can do it.' Leaving a six figure salary is a hard thing to do. And I said, 'I need a drink to help me get those words out.' And he met me. He rode his bike over to some restaurant. And I just said, 'I can't do this anymore. I'm really not into it. It's really killing me.' And so I left that job, and then thought, okay, I'm going to make art again. And Melanie Yazzie invited me to go on a trip with her to New Zealand. And while I was there, we stayed on a marae where it was all artists. But it was indigenous New Zealanders, and also all these artists from Canada and all over the United States, but they were indigenous people. So we were the only pakeha, or whatever you want to call it, that were there. And she said, 'Here,' put a block in my lap with a carving tool, and said, 'Make a print. Carve a block.' And as of that moment, and that was right around 2002, I started carving on that. And I was so obsessed. And I found, okay, I love this, and by the time I got home, I had ordered up all these blocks. I probably did, I am not kidding, I probably did 12 editions that month, the first month I got back. I was just obsessive. And I owe a lot to Melanie Yazzie. But I don't think I carve as well as someone like Tom Huck, or some of these other guys who carve, that I felt it didn't quite work for me the way that drawing did. And I always had this love for drawing. And I don't know if you're aware, but my sketchbooks are the my main reason for living right now. I felt like they sort of got me back into making art and discovering why I needed to make art again. So I needed a type of vehicle. If I went into printmaking with something other than relief, what would it be? And because Andy Polk, my husband, taught lithography at the University of Arizona, I said, 'Teach me lithography.' And he laughed. He said, 'Okay, sure. Yeah.' I think he thought, yeah, right. I'll teach her, and that'll last a week. Well, about, I'd say, six years later, we were standing together out on the patio or something. And he said, 'Boy, was I wrong. I had no idea that you would be as interested in or as into it as you are, but boy, was I wrong.' If anything, it's just that I can't stop. I love it. And it was like the dam burst. And all this pent up energy for those 30 years running and working in those companies... I had an explosion, this creative sort of explosion. And it's not to say I didn't do some pretty bad work. Oh boy, if I could get my hands on all that stuff I did in the first, I'd say, six years, I'd burn it with a match. I really would. But things like just staying with it and sort of trying to improve as I go, just trying not to get stuck, but trying to understand my content, making the work that matters. That took me a couple of years, to really hone in on why I wanted to make work, why I wanted to make art. And that was probably the biggest, hardest thing for me to re-enter making art again, was I felt like that pony that had been on a treadmill and gets turned out to the giant 600 acres of pasture. You're intimidated. You don't know what to do with that. And it took me a while, and I had to make mistakes. But the thing that helped me the most was my sketchbook, because those sketchbooks are your ticket to fail. I mean, you can just sketch all day long and do the worst stuff. But what happens when you get all that worst stuff done? Some of that good stuff comes in there, or you get these little morsels of hope, of, 'Wow, that makes sense. And if I put that with this and mix that and that, that makes more sense.' And it just started as a building tool for me, kind of a jumping off place to get started with my art, and then lithography, the nature of lithography, being able to draw on a stone and make multiples that look like my sketches and my drawings. That was the very best ever. And once I did that, there was no going back. I couldn't do relief. I'm interested in doing etching or intaglio, but I just don't feel like those will do for me what lithography does, drawing on the stone. And that love affair I'm having, it's insatiable. I can't get enough. I really physically dream it. You know, when you love something, don't you dream about it? And I realized, for the first time, I was an artist. I think it took me about 10 years, where I really accepted the fact that I must be an artist, because I live and talk and breathe it all the time. And that made me happy. I'm not making six figures. But what good is all the money in the world if it drives me crazy?

Miranda Metcalf  Absolutely. Anyone I know who's really lived that life where they're just working for the money, but making good money, one of the things they'll say is like, 'The only thing I have to show for it is a J Crew cashmere sweater in every color.' That's it. There's just no joy.

Kathryn Polk  It used to be Coogi from down under, right? Yeah, I don't even know when that was. Back in the '80s.

Miranda Metcalf  Totally.

Kathryn Polk  I remember that world. It was absolutely insane. I mean, my New York clients - and I love New York, I truly do. I think the art there is amazing - but my clients really, really sized me up by my shoes, my watch, my pen, everything. And I felt my hair, everything, had to be judged there. But I loved my LA clients, because they were so laid back, they didn't even wear socks. And I thought they were the coolest people ever. And I did some pretty big accounts, I worked on Electronic Arts in LA, well, San Francisco. And I also... I worked with Gucci for a brief time, got to meet Dr. Gucci back in the '80s. I mean, it's as good as it gets, I guess, for that kind of world. But making art, that's the other thing. It's like, I quit expecting anything back from it. And I honestly thought, okay, those were the wrong reasons to make the work. It's got to be something personal for making me care. What makes me care? And when I quit worrying about what people thought of me and what I should be doing, or what I thought people thought I should be doing, when I quit doing that, things clicked. And the oddest thing was, I think people actually noticed me more when I quit trying in that way. To please, or to try to do what's trendy, or whatever it was. And I look back and I'm shocked that anyone would care now. But I personally feel that it fulfills the side of me that sort of helps me cope. It helps me sort of expel demons, with what I'm living with, whereas I think in the past, I don't even know if I could have worked it out with my yoga. Art's really, it kind of does feed my soul now, and I think when I don't do it, I get this sort of feeling of deprivation where I am without. I'm starving or something's not right if I'm not making it, or if I travel or something. I sound like an evangelist.

Miranda Metcalf  Oh, I love it. No, it's beautiful. I am so happy to hear that, because I know that so many people hearing it will identify with that. And some of my favorite and most often or most common feedback that I get from the podcast is people will say they're listening to it alone in their studio and they'll feel like they're not alone. And I think that hearing someone like you speak so beautifully to that need to be creating, and the catharsis you can get from it, I'm sure it will connect with a lot of people.

Kathryn Polk  And that second chance. I mean, the idea that coming back to art at the age of 50, which, I was 50 when I started making work again from undergrad. By the way, I was at Memphis State University, when it was called that at the time, and I left my junior year. So I never got my BFA or my MFA. And I'm really open and honest about it, even when I teach at a university. But not making art all those years, and then coming at the age of 50 and making it and starting up again, I never expected it to be what it is today to me. It just amazes me that, first of all, I'm able to do it all day long. Or getting invited to school to talk to students. It's a huge honor. When I talk to students, I'm so invigorated by the time I get home because of their passions and their excitement for their work, and it kind of rubs off, so it keeps me fired up. And it's really fascinating to me to see the relationship in printmaking. And for the brief time I was in college, in undergrad, I was a painting major. And I never quite felt the community of that that I do in printmaking. And when I go to Europe, or I travel, it's always checking out their printmaking community. And it's like we have this common bond and this sort of tribal relationship through the medium, whether we even speak French or not. I just got back from Atelier le Grand Village. And my French is horrible, but they speak the language of printmaking. It's great.

Miranda Metcalf  It is incredible how you show up anywhere in the world, and if you can find a press, you can find your people. It's amazing.

Kathryn Polk  It's true, it's really true. And everybody listening might feel the same way too. It makes the world not so big.

Miranda Metcalf  Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah. I'd really love to chat about your really distinctive style, because I think you touched on it a little bit, that kind of development and how you sort of were like, 'I'm just gonna make what matters to me.' And you have a really distinctive aesthetic, that is, it can be kind of nostalgic or dreamlike, or maybe a little vulgar, even. It has all of these different elements to it. And you see a lot of these midcentury sort of dressed women, looks like there's relationships between women, sort of mother-daughter things, and I just would love to hear you talk about how you came to it and and what it is for you to work in that style.

Kathryn Polk  Well, I definitely, when I returned to art making, I also tried to return to sort of getting to know my family. When I was in business, I worked 70 hour weeks, so I was not very accessible. And I have to admit, I probably was not approachable either. Because I was so busy. But as an artist, I kind of started wanting to understand where I came from more and relate more to who I was. And I think by knowing your family and trying to revisit, which... we were slightly dysfunctional, so that wasn't easy to do. My mother and I are very close, however. We got along great. We never had a fight in my life. I don't think I ever fought with her. But the relationships between my sister and my daughter, her daughter, and all of my cousins and family, and all the women that I was getting to know in my travel, I became curious about how they functioned within their environments and what was going on to us, in the microcosm to the macrocosm. You want to see how the world's treating women in different places. But you also want to see why you are the way you are because of what you were or what affected you. So all of that, I just started making this sort of iconography of ideas and symbols of all these things that meant something, and I've reached a point where I've decided, I better not tell all my secrets. But a lot of my symbols have a special meaning for me. And I think someone asked me in an interview what they meant, and I said, 'It's a secret. I'm not gonna tell you.' But I also gave a lecture at one university, and I actually answered a couple of questions, and oh, my gosh, I could feel the wind shear in the audience. Because they had no idea that that was what that meant. And I think that sort of darkness of dysfunctionality with my immediate family always kind of seeps in a little bit. But also the treatment of women, how women are regarded. One thing I say sometimes is - and let me mention something about what I'm doing visually. I never draw from photos, because I feel like photos kind of really ruin it for me as far as the look and feel. I kind of almost strive for a primitive memory of what I think the body looks like. I think I do well in figure drawing if I have a model, but without a model, I have a tendency to interpret. And with a primitive eye, it's almost as though I'm mimicking a Dick and Jane book a little bit, but it's not as good as Dick and Jane. It's my own version of primitive. And I reached a point where I stopped fighting. I thought, well, this isn't pretty. I can do pretty if I really think hard about it. But I decided not to fight that so much. So I really tried to do these memory drawings and build up these symbols and see. But I choose these primary colors all the time, and I build a lot of color from those primary colors. Almost like a CMYK, cyan, yellow, magenta, and black. And I work with a key, meaning usually the black key first, and the order of printing, I'll print my dark to light. A lot of lithographers print light to dark, I print dark to light, because I like to be able to react as I go on the color. I also use tint based ink so that I can overlap them. So I take those primary colors, and sort of for example, with tint based inks, I can get a green, overlapping the yellow and the blue. So there's a kind of process that I map out beforehand and try to keep it as simple as possible, because I am not going to make it as laborious a process as it could get by overdrawing, except I do overdraw, I guess. But more of where I painstakingly do a very realistic or highly rendered piece. But I will try to do shortcuts when I can by overlapping colors, tinted colors. Or I'll think of ways that I don't have to run it through the press. If I'm doing 65 prints and I'm doing seven colors, it'd be great if it looks like it's 12 colors. I love color. I love color, and I know there are people who simply make a living doing black and white prints, but I've realized that if it doesn't have color on it, I don't feel quite like it's complete for myself or my own personal style. Anyway... oh, I was saying that my teacher said I use "monkey colors." And whenever I was told by a teacher something like that, because they were primaries, and I wasn't mixing the color, more or less. Where Chuck Close, I've been told, had 200 skin tones mixed for him when he worked with his printers. And I would think, okay, I can get that with a leaf brown and a tint base, a 1075. Done! So it's that simplicity of, I don't want to get bogged down in that sort of laborious overthinking about it. So in that way, some people might not respect how I go about it, but that's how I do it. Because I would rather be making my next print while I'm working on the one I'm working on. So my head's already thinking down the road. And I want it to stay fresh, I don't want the work to get... if you're around something too long, I think it can wear you down a little bit. So I've always kind of appreciated a little bit of momentum in making the work, a need for speed kind of thing.

Miranda Metcalf  I think one of the things that it speaks to is that you're doing this really fantastic work, but you're also quite prolific, and these beautiful images just seem to come out again and again. And so I think you speaking to your actual practice and also keeping it simple, not letting it get stale, not letting it get overworked, really adds this feeling of immediacy that is really dynamic in the images that you create.

Kathryn Polk  Oh, I love what you just said, Miranda. Could you come present for me? I mean, I know I used to have to present to clients, but for some reason, as an artist, it's so much more personal. And I just stumble at the words. I don't think I can explain myself the way I might have. But that was beautiful. Yeah, thanks. That's great.

Miranda Metcalf  It's always harder to talk about one's own work. I mean, it's just a fact of life, you know? 

Kathryn Polk  Are you making work? Are you doing much printing yourself? 

Miranda Metcalf  So actually, I'm not a practicing printmaker myself. I know, I'm an interloper in this world a little bit.

Kathryn Polk  Well, you say that now. You say that now. You're not even of age yet. You're not 50, I'm sure.

Miranda Metcalf  I love it. No, I really was thinking, I was like, 'Oh, yeah. I can start.' I've got another 15 years to start my practice.

Kathryn Polk  Yeah, I think that's appropriate too. There are so many printmakers that I respect and look up to, and I can't even tell you all of them. And I hate to start listing and mentioning, because I would leave someone really important out. But I will say, I'm quite interested in women. And I think it's because that's my perspective. I couldn't pretend to be... it's almost like writing a book, I couldn't write from a man's perspective. And I don't know even if I could produce work that I would feel as good about if I tried to go through a man's perspective. But it has really helped me, studying the lives of other women artists, and seeing what they're going through. And I will mention one person, Minna Resnick was someone I got to know, her father lived in Tucson, and I was so lucky that she hung out with me a few nights every month for the last two years of her father's life. And I was just so amazed at her wisdom as an artist, as a woman, and it was inspiring, and I thought, okay, I can do this legacy myself, if it's of any value to anyone, I'm willing to share. And to men and women. It's not exclusive. It's something that I feel like we need to share everything we can to help others get a leg up on what they're doing, or trying to do. Anyway, she was wonderful. She was brilliant. I don't know if you know Minna's work, but she'd be worth checking into.

Miranda Metcalf  Definitely. I think one of the things that's really prominent and one of the first things that strikes people about your work is that it's female centered, and about a female experience. And so of course, because of the way the world works, you make work about - or should I say, you make work with male figures in it, you're just making work. You make work with women figures in it, you're making feminist work, you're making work about this othering, because the whole world, of course, is male centric, just to use female bodies as your default body suddenly puts your work almost in an othered camp, by its nature, and I just would love to hear you speak to that.

Kathryn Polk  Well, interestingly, it is predominantly from my perspective, looking through women's eyes, especially the women in my family, but there have been situations where I do also like to take away gender, and like to make it where you don't necessarily know is this a man or a woman, because I feel that gender is a society label. And there is no such thing actually. I feel that we are what we are by birth, and there's no way to change that. And so sometimes I actually prefer if my women or men or humans are not detectable, one gender or the other. And I know that sounds a little odd to say. But lately I have been dealing with that in my work, and I won't mention particular prints, I'll let you guess for yourself. But I started doing some of the poses, when I was going to figure drawing, they had an open studio where they had a live model, and you could just go and pay a fee and draw there in Tucson. And oftentimes, I use a lot of my gesture of the male figure for my women. And put the simplicity patterns of the 1950s on this male figure, and they really resembled more women that I understood who work a lot, weren't necessarily from a fashion, style kind of situation. I'm liking to sort of not be so in black and white, what's going on, I'd like to have a little more enigma, I guess.

Miranda Metcalf  You were talking a bit about that idea of gender and gender in your work. And I think that luckily, we as a society are moving towards the deconstruction of gender, or sort of recognizing that gender is a societal construct that we perform, and that there's a spectrum and that there's all kinds of fluctuations and transitions and gray areas and all of it. And yet gender, particularly almost this classical feminine prints and colors and styles of dress, do come up in your work a lot. So it's just really interesting to hear that you definitely are in tune with the fact that it's not a binary. It makes me curious about the fact that you've got the sort of traditional aesthetics, traditional iconography, and yet, you're exploring gender in a non binary sort of 21st century way, is really interesting to me. And just maybe, if you want to talk to that a bit?

Kathryn Polk  Oh, that's great. Yeah, I was researching titles of songs. And I was looking at one called "Out of the Wardrobe" by The Kinks. And I love the idea of the superficial type casting we do with our clothes. And I'm finding that that might be evolving, and the freedom to choose and be you as you choose, and how you appear and how you look is, hopefully, we're getting to a stage where that's accepted. That you just become a human being. And you're probably going to hear - I have a hard time when I feel that people are alienated because they don't fit a part, or they're made to feel as though they are an outcast, because within especially family units, I think can be the worst. And I won't mention specifics. But when you have family members that are not out, your heart breaks. You just think, I'm living out loud, why can't you? And you want to support that. You want to support the fact that they're safe for being who they are, to live out loud. And so I think when I deal with things in society, or my family, I do put it in my work. And again, I don't want to get into the specifics of the close family members or anything like that. But I want in my work to speak to things that bother me. And there's some darkness in my work. And I know that I try to do what appears to be very childlike colors, and even childlike poses, and the way they're drawn is very childlike. Like a little book, children's book illustration. But there's a darkness. And right now I'm feeling a lot about our politics that are pretty hard for my head and the fact that society has all these rules that it casts on our children of how their behavior should be... it's just hard. And I think, well, I can put it in my work. And I prefer to have people see it and have it mean something to them on their own terms than for me to tell them how to see it. You know, they see what they see. And so if I put it there and it's subliminal, or it's not as hit them over the head with a hammer with what I'm talking about, I like that. Because it might mean more to someone who needs it to mean something else to them than what I had intended for it to be. So I want my work to have that sort of depth of freedom of, let's say, interpretation. I just don't want to tell them how to think about it.

Miranda Metcalf  The work that I find I respond to the most does live in that space between the specific and the mysterious. And because that way, the meaning is truly formed in the conversation between the creator, the object, and the receiver. And that's, I think, when the real magic can happen with visual arts.

Kathryn Polk  And when it's not as predictable. And I'm sure people have no idea what some aspects of these symbols, what they mean, but they might help them sort of have some kind of personal relationship with the work that I had not ever thought to do. And to them, it's something else. So I like that. I like that idea. I think that not always coming with instructions - and I have to watch myself, because I think I slip into that sort of safe side of making work sometimes that gets formulaic and can kind of turn it out like a factory if I'm not careful. So that's something I try to safeguard. And I think that going back to that sketchbook, it kind of helps to keep that stagnation away. I think that really helps. Especially the sketchbook flexibility lets you react immediately to something. I can't grain my stone, draw on it, etch it and process it, and print it in... I might be able to do it in 24 hours. I know Sean Star Wars can print five color prints in, what was it, an hour or something? That's pretty amazing. But I don't know. I'm still figuring stuff out. And I certainly don't know everything. And now I like it that way. I like that I don't know everything. Because it gives me a lot more that I have to learn. And I think I'd be in trouble if I thought I knew everything too. Boy. Wouldn't that be boring?

Miranda Metcalf  Absolutely. So I think that's actually a beautiful place to wrap up our chat. I really like that. And I just wanted to thank you again, and to ask that maybe you let people know where they can follow you and find out more about you and your new adventures.

Kathryn Polk  Well, I am on Instagram, and I'm known as @onechair on Instagram, based on the fact that I never want to supervise people again. So I only want one chair in my studio. So that's me on Instagram.

Miranda Metcalf  Yeah. Excellent. And then is there anything on the horizon that you're particularly excited about or want to make sure people know about coming out?

Kathryn Polk  Oh, well, I'm trying to prepare for a couple of shows in January. I actually am showing at Wally Workman in Austin, Texas, during Print Austin. And/or if you're in Tucson, I'm at Davis Dominguez gallery, which, I love those guys. They've been so sweet to me all these years.

Miranda Metcalf  Well, thank you so much again. This has been just a total pleasure. And you were just great and open and I'm really looking forward to sharing this. So I'll definitely be in touch. 

Kathryn Polk  Again, Miranda, I'm honored. Thank you so much. 

Miranda Metcalf  Thank you. Have a great evening. Well, that's our show for this week. Join me again in two weeks' time when my guest will be Bernard Deroitte. Bernard has been running a print specific gallery in Chicago for years, and he'll be joining us to talk about being a print advocate, what he looks for in the printmakers he represents, and his take on the future of brick and mortar galleries. If you like Pine Copper Lime (Hello, Print Friend) and you'd like to support it, you can go to patreon.com/helloprintfriend. Every donation, no matter how large or small, is greatly appreciated. This episode, like all episodes, was written and produced by me, Miranda Metcalf, with editing help from Timothy Pauszek and music by Joshua Webber. I'll see you in two weeks.