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Details
I am an artist, writer and musician born and based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Why I started drawing at a young age is a mystery to me, but creating has become a way of returning to and reclaiming myself, over and over, in a world that doesn't always treat me (a woman, a living being, an artist) with the care and gentleness needed. My way of creating involves attuning, or leaning into moments, people, and places with presence and sensual awareness. Attuning through the senses opens space for deeper listening, which allows me to more deeply listen to myself. It is in this space that I begin, again and again, to make peace not only with a narrative of the past, but with the narratives unfolding in the present: who I am now, and what I carry now. Working this way I often experience a sense of belonging to myself and the world. I hope for my work to offer a glimpse of that experience for others as well.
The narrative of the present begins in the senses: the cool air brushing nostrils as you exhale, the itch of a mosquito bite, a hunger pang, a bird song, a lingering taste of coffee or the salt of a tear, the smell of jasmine on a nearby ledge. Each of these is simple, yet they are a gateway to complexity: stories, experiences, all the associations we might have with coffee or jasmine or tears sprout up. The practice of unfolding with myself will be one I carry for the rest of my life, and my work is sourced in this unfolding. As such my mediums, my subject matter, even my styles are always shifting yet always contain the tone of my particular voice, which cannot be hidden or eradicated from anything that comes from me.
Womens' bodies hold immense power: the power to grow and give birth to another life, the power of resilience in the face of oppression, and has held a symbolic power that goes back to earliest recorded history. This power has invoked awe and fear, the inspiration to worship and protect as well as the compulsion to control and destroy. My journey with my own woman-body has taken be through the long hallways of our collective past as well as my own personal labyrinths, seeking a true, intimate merge with myself, one in which I am not fragmented by fear and compulsion to control, whether my own internalized version of this or that which comes towards me from external sources. My visual art is often figure and landscape oriented, teasing out the stories of bodies, which if listened to carefully always whisper to me "you aren't alone".
Exhibitions/Installations/Performances
2023
Noisepop Summer of Music Festival, featured performer, San Francisco, Ca. June - September.
2022
Pupila Film Festival, Best Soundtrack, Best Experimental Short, Best Original Concept for "Hungry Ghost", a collaboration with animator Guido Devadder.
Hallucinea Film Festival, Special Mention for "Hungry Ghost".
2021
Patterns and Symmetry, San Francisco Women Artists group exhibition, San Francisco, Ca. March-April.
2019
Performance with SCLork at Dolby Labs in San Francisco, Ca. March.
Performance with SCLork at Linux Audio Conference, Stanford University, Palo Alto, Ca. March.
Small Works Invitational Exhibition, Abrams Claghorn Gallery, Berkeley, Ca. April.
Performance with SCLork at Garden of Memory at Chapel of the Chimes, Mountain View Cemetary, Piedmont, Ca. June.
2018
Can You Hear Me Now? Group Exhibition of Women Artists, Abrams Claghorn Gallery, Berkeley, Ca. June.
Certificate of Completion, Supercollider Workshop, Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA) at Stanford University, Palo Alto, Ca. August.
Joined SCLork (Santa Clara University Laptop Orchestra), an ensemble that combines live coding, recording and video to create original electronic compositions and improvisation, September.
2017
Poet’s Reading the News: This is Not a Reality Party, participating performer. Collaboration with Claire Tompkins combining a reading of current events with performance of baroque opera. Private Venue. San Francisco, Ca. October.
Started voice study with Jane Randolph, San Francisco Conservatory of Music. April.
2016
Screening of Leatherback, original animated music video for an original song by May Oskan of the band Storm Door. PianoFight, San Francisco, Ca. November.
2015
Solo Exhibition, Cloverdale Pop-Up Gallery, Healdsburg, Ca. August.
Solo Exhibition, Kilovolt Coffee, Oakland, Ca. October-November.
2013
Featured Artist at Jumpin’ Java Café, San Francisco, Ca. February-March.
Glyph at Art Ark Gallery, part of group exhibition. San Jose, Ca. April.
Mixed Media Arts Mixer, Firehouse Collective. Berkeley, Ca. September.
2012
Stage Design and Art Direction for Mana Maddy Album Release: Another Trip Around the Sun. Berkeley Unitarian Universalist Church, Berkeley, Ca. June.
Live Painting Demonstration on models and exhibition of paintings at The Yerba Buena Project, The Pallet Space in Emeryville, Ca. September.
Voice Mentor at San Francisco City College with Professor Judy Hubbell, September-December.
2011
In the Forest, Interactive Environmental Installation, The Art Thou Gallery, Berkeley, Ca. April – May.
Live Painting with the Something Something Quartet at the Jazzschool, Berkeley, Ca. August.
Project Ion with Fivepoints Arthouse, interactive event featuring a process created by Kaitlin McSweeney and Adam Rygiol called “video-canvas” involving the combination of digitally animated art projected onto a canvas used as a painting ground. The resultant painting is a record of her perception, rather than a record of an external object. The process reflects the role of an individual’s perception in the process of visual translation. The event will have a figure drawing portion, a performance by Adam and Kaitlin of the video-canvas process, and live musical performances throughout. Fivepoints Arthouse, San Francisco, Ca. November.
2009
23HAM (House of Art and Multimedia): Event Coordinator, Resident Artist. Berkeley, Ca.
Featured Artist and Producer of MAMA: Meet Artists Manifest Autonomy, hosted by 23HAM, Berkeley, Ca. May.
Pro Arts East Bay Open Studios, 23HAM, Berkeley, Ca. June.
Live Painting onstage with Judgement Day, The Independent, San Francisco, Ca. October.
Leda and the Egrets, full room mural completed in North Berkeley Residence, November.
Dollhouse group show, ARC Gallery and Studios, San Francisco, Ca. December – January.
Stage Design and Art Direction for Judgement Day and Foxtails Brigade Parlour Series Concerts, Flux 53, Oakland, Ca December.
2007
De Young Museum, Art for All: A Tribute to Gilbert and George College Night at the De Young Museum, San Francisco, Ca. February-May.
Education and Certifications
B.A. Mass Communications, University of California Berkeley, 2007.
Voice Mentor, San Francisco City College, 2012.
Yoga Instructor Ceritfication, 200 hr. Yoga Alliance, 2012.
Portfolio
A series of abstracts, and figurative abstracts exploring the fine and shifting line between recognizable form and chaos, created between 2009 and 2021, a decade in which I was searching for my voice in many ways and with many mediums. These paintings are out of my hands and owned by others now, but each holds specific memory and significance for me, as if part of a shell I've been gradually dropping, shard by shard. "Prayer" was a gift for one of my cello teachers, inspired by the music of Ernst Bloch. Learning cello was very confronting and difficult for me, forcing me to challenge many long held belief about what I could and couldn't do, who I was and wasn't. In many ways continuing to play the instrument has been an act of blind faith, a prayer. "Atlantic" started out as a portrait during a time when I felt I had to constantly prove my technical skill with painting and my process had to be effortful and painful. At some point during its creation something snapped in me and I let go, and just started playing with the paint. This was a very important moment for me and my creative process, and the beginning of integration more love and self-acceptance into my work. "Dream of Red Birds" was inspired by a dream I had in which I was sleeping in this dark room and suddenly red cranes were flapping around. Though I felt heavy and exhausted I felt that I had to free them, so I stood up and walked to some sliding glass doors that opened to a garden. As I opened the door they flew out and in that moment I realized I too could leave the room and enter the light-filled garden. These are just a few of the stories, if you are interested in more please reach out, I'm happy to share.
Between 2020 and 2023 I experienced much loss and the breaking down of what I'd been building for over a decade. What I was left with turned out to be the most essential: my body, my truth and my health, all of which needed nurturing and attention. Part of learning to nurture myself was understanding the harmful concepts and beliefs I'd internalized over the years, particularly when it came to being a woman. These paintings are a combination of mixed media and digital, and represent a resurrection of my self-worth, a reclamation of my body and energy, and a reckoning of my past.
Contact Info
- Emailkaitlinmcsweeney@gmail.com
- Websitehttps://www.kaitlinmcsweeney.com/
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