TAKE COVER
May 2 through June 7, 2026 Opening reception Saturday May 2, 2 -6pm
For immediate release:
TAKE COVER An exhibition of recent work by
Katharine Umsted, May 2 – June 7, 2026.
Opening reception: Saturday May 2nd from 2-6 to meet & greet the artist
Philip Douglas Fine Art 545 Warren St. 2nd floor, Hudson New York 646 765 5818 Friday, Saturday, Sunday 11-5 and by appointment.
Contact Philip Douglas Heilman, pipdoug@gmail.com. www.philipdouglasfineart.com.
Gallery essay:
Katharine Umsted TAKE COVER, on view May 2 through June 7, 2026 at Philip Douglas Fine Art, 545 Warren ST. 2nd floor, Hudson New York.
Katharine Umsted has created a series of wall constructions made of utilitarian materials: wood, tin foil, panty hose, nails, screws. No sentimental word play. No words at all. No explanations. And that is the point. Just sixteen wall constructions that exist to “be”. Informal. Created to be enjoyed. These works are portraits and that may be the intellectual energy behind them but what they’re “about” is the act of making; of implying, of simply reclaiming autonomy & independence after the score with COVID separation & loneliness was settled with her last solo exhibition of fictional painted post cards at Tanja Grunert in 2021. This time the demand is on the viewer. Self Portraits? That explanation would be superfluous. Of course they’re self portraits. The point isn’t an explanation. The point is the making. These aren’t portraits that capture someone’s physical essence. They are inspired surrealist abstract portraits; purposefully wrapped material assemblages in the spirit of the great Italian/American sculptor/painter Salvatore Scarpitta who turned personal experience into wrapped & flexed sculpture statements. Like Scarpitta, Umsted imagines a marriage of material, surface, abstraction, tension and the artist’s mindfulness about making a thing because she (we) can in order to exact a response. These artworks are unique objects with a sense of individuality and history but hold firm as a unified body of work. They work because the act of making is the point. Isn’t it? The story this time is hidden; but wait you said the artist calls them portraits. So it follows that they must be about the artist, so there must be a story. Right? Maybe, maybe not. These portraits celebrate materiality and balance; an attempt to make order out of the artist’s journey. There is struggle evidenced here too, tempered between Scarpittian physicality and the nature of remembered heritage attempting to be expressed more personally as objects. As surely as a man’s first razor invokes profound life changes, then so too panty hose carry an important life marker for a woman. And manners. Always manners (she’s southern mind you). These portrait (s) contain multitudes of meanings. So in the way that manners can masquerade as character so too can materials masquerade as life stepping stones. Picasso’s 1906 portrait of Gertrude Stein lacked a sense of realistic resemblance, yet Stein believed it captured her essential being rather than her fleeting appearance. She later stated that she was more interested in the “exactitude” of the internal self rather than realistic representation. That may be what we have here. Stretcher bars used aren’t typical painting stretchers, instead they’re simple three inch wood slats nailed together to form a narrow box. On that, tin foil is sculpted, laced (a mirror?). Panty hose wrap around the stretchers in and out of the tin foil to create abstract compositions with dimensionality and the kind of surface that a designer would die for. These are materially convincing, sincere sculpted “expressions”. Portraits of familiar southern heritage may be invoked and a sense of wonderment for Appalachian outsider influences may have been conjured, regionalist furniture makers of yore could have been sussed. All by design. Artistic intuition is one thing. This is not that. The artist is schooled. She is playing with form, completion, heritage, outsider attributes, status and non status – all at the same time. She is looking for work and the nature OF (art)work. The thing made is the point. Making a thing is the point. Form precedes function. In this case construction precedes form. These are objects that function as objects.
Philip Douglas Heilman, April 2026
Katharine Umsted, Untitled #1, 2026, wood, panty hose, foil, 25 x 18 inches
Katharine Umsted Untitled #2, 2026, wood, panty hose foil, 25 x 18 inches