What is your name?
Kathy Polenberg
How would you describe what you do?
It is communication in the overlapping and ever-evolving vocabularies and mediums of creative expression: writing, painting, craft etc.
What are you currently working on?
Right now I’m involved in theatrical scenic art and set painting, focusing on creating activities which can demonstrate stagecraft to kids, and allow some hands-on experience. An ongoing project at home is a series of abstract watercolors I am doing in response to a series of subjective photographs by my husband. It’s somewhat premeditated – we chose local places to go with the camera (some maybe only a block away) but he framed and shot subjects that I didn’t paint a response to until he made his prints. So my part is from memory of our field trips, and spontaneous reaction to the prints. None of our images for this series, which we will show side-by-side (married), are more than 6 months old (though we’ve been married 30 years.)
What has had the greatest influence on your work?
Sunlight and memory.
What is the greatest misconception about you or your work?
That it is not informed by you and your behavior and your communication when it reaches me.
What do you see as the main strengths and weaknesses of the medium you work in?
Marketing and the abbreviation of our culture, our communal experience, our present, and our history. We are steeped in evaporation, and that makes a weak tea.
How has technology impacted upon the work you do?
Not too much- all my working parts are original to this body.
What’s the greatest piece of advice you would like to pass on?
Intend good and recycle the evidence.
Where can we find you online?
For now I’m on face book and archived at a bunch of lit mags. I’d rather you find me on the porch.
What are you reading at the moment?
A list of questions from Paul Grimsley. I like to reread Louise Erdrich and Barbara Kingsolver in the summer.
What are you listening to at the moment?
I’m in the yard so there’s the neighborhood comings and goings, and there’s this mockingbird in the holly tree with a 12-song set list so far.
Anything else we should know?
Not crazy about “should.”