Katie Bulova

Biography 
Katie Bulova thinks about lots of things all the time. She loves connecting memories of places that she lived and the people she knew into themes of her work. She carries the experiences of knowing old friends, meeting new friends, remembering old haunts and discovering new places like seashells in a pocket. From time to time, she pulls them out of her pocket and carefully places them in her work.  

Raised in a football family while hating competition, she came to an art practice later, after working in the Public Health field on Health Community and HIV prevention initiatives. Her love of qualitative research and her uncanny memory for the words people say, if not their name, allows her to create narratives for the stories that she tells.  

She lives with her family, her loving, patient husband and vibrant, splash of sunshine daughters, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. You can tell her house from the moment that you turn onto the block. The cat, heavily belled, lies under a bush in the dinosaur garden. Every window is decorated for the holiday of the month. Two little dogs bellow in the window. The garden is in happy bird, happy butterfly disarray. She’s probably drinking coffee and reading a book with her daughter on the porch. 

Artist Statement 
A child’s laugh. A memory. An embrace. Each captured and elevated with the same equality. I use form and craft, skill and shape to communicate places in my heart. In Just Like Mom, a fabric turkey transports the viewer to a dinner table filled with kids, a lumpy fruit salad and the reverence a family feels for the specialness of gathering. In Teddy Bear Coat, texture and color translates a fuzzy brown coat at the school bus-stop on a cold, damp day. A question is asked: can a wash and wear fabric framing small shoulders weighed down under a heavy backpack, reveal maternal love? For who is to say that a child’s laugh, a memory and an embrace don’t each have the same power in the world. 

Links
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