Letter from Kathy Porter

On the Move

By: Charles Giuliano - Jan 06, 2025

 

 

 

One of the elements of understanding the artist Katherine Porter was tracking her many moves and motivations. It’s the kind of personal detail that is left out of the writing of critics and most art historians.

As an artist and friend Kathy was layered, mercurial and complex. It was the frentic edge that informed the work and defined her concerns for equity and social justice. Part of that was reflected by a constant search for a supportive community. That entailed a balance between geography as well as signifiers of the people and site specifics of those decisions.

For a number of years she fought lupus before her death on April 14, 2024. Before that, when she was near us in Southern Vermont, she discussed the illness and the isolation of living in a clinic seeking treatment. It seemed to be creeping into her body and mind with symptoms that would take an expert to describe and analyze. Certainly it complicated her life and work.

Since her demise I have had conversations with those who knew her. It has been a matter of collecting fragments to assemble a compassionate and more complete understanding. She enjoyed a long and mostly successful career. That was noted at its peak by large and powerful abstracted works with subliminal social signifiers.

The encroachment of disease deprived the work of scale with a modification of toxic materials. At a more intricate scale the work was as ever personal and charged. But the attention of the mainstream art world is fickle and ever changing. That had an impact on her state of mind and equated to the constant moves to find a place and situation best suited to her creativity.

It’s January and today I took on the clutter of papers in front of my computer. It’s my self inflicted chaotic space were I write articles and books. Digging through the detritus I found doctor appointments as far back as 2020. A number of note pads and pens emerged as well as two pocket watches and a note from my mom. I wound them to see if they work. There were birthday and Christmas cards.

As well as a note card from Kathy apparently in response to an e mail. I am sharing it with you as a document that clarifies her final move. It’s hand written which has largely gone out of style.

Dear Charles,

Something from NYRB about STANFORD. Stanford was one of my favorite places to teach and live. And it is a strange place- conflicted I think. Rodin’s Gates of Hell is magnificent. (word scratched out) It is right there always.

I am MOVING in September to Santa Fe. It’s where I lived part of the 1960’s and 1970’s.

Time to Move. (underlined upper right corner.)

Time to, for the last time, leave cold grey Maine. It’s hard to leave this wonderful big house and studio. But one does have to go out of doors. Few people are smiling here. Maybe we all feel assaulted by the sky.

I enjoy your e mail letters.

Best to you and

(Lower left margin, Palo Alto.)