{"id":104234,"date":"2026-07-08T12:33:00","date_gmt":"2026-07-08T19:33:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=104234"},"modified":"2026-07-08T12:38:28","modified_gmt":"2026-07-08T19:38:28","slug":"catherine-velasquez-working-small-thinking-big","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/catherine-velasquez-working-small-thinking-big\/","title":{"rendered":"Catherine Velasquez: Working Small, Thinking Big"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Catherine Velasquez works in 542 square feet, and the limitations of that space have become part of her process. “Working out of my 542-sq ft apartment has its challenges,” she says, “but it’s also pushed me toward more intentional time spent researching dynastic works and periods, reading up on artists, and testing new surface details.” The constraint has become a discipline\u2014daily sketching, slower testing, more deliberation before anything gets built in three dimensions. “I\u2019ve been allowing myself to enjoy all the steps in the process. I\u2019m typically more impatient and rush through the testing process, but with a smaller working space the process naturally moves slower.”<\/p>\n

Clay is the Salt Lake City artist’s primary material, worked through traditional coil and pinch handbuilding, but she’s been reaching toward wood lately, a gradual departure into new territory, mostly for display purposes. Her surface language stays consistent: a multi-layered treatment combining mishima and intaglio techniques, pastel grounds cut with bold linework, forms that stay soft and pillowy, even as the imagery resonates with deep ancestry.<\/p>\n

Velasquez traces her visual vocabulary to her two grandparents’ houses. To her Ah-Ma’s origami menagerie\u2014”hundreds of brightly colored pieces of paper folded together to create various textured birds, delicate and precise”\u2014set against the Colombian art filling her Mona and Papi’s home: terracotta tile, stuccoed walls, bronze bullfighters caught mid-motion. She folds in Botero’s heavyset figures and the floral motifs of Ming and Qing dynasty vases, arriving at something that keeps Botero’s exaggerated mass but empties it out.<\/p>\n