{"id":106200,"date":"2026-09-29T18:21:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-30T01:21:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=106200"},"modified":"2026-09-30T19:34:59","modified_gmt":"2026-10-01T02:34:59","slug":"kate-aitchison-a-landscape-to-live-in","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/kate-aitchison-a-landscape-to-live-in\/","title":{"rendered":"Kate Aitchison: A Landscape to Live In"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Growing up in Flagstaff, Arizona, Kate Aitchison had a father who could tell her what everything was. A naturalist and photographer, he knew the plants of the Southwest\u2014which were native, which were invasive, what belonged where. His daughter wasn’t particularly interested. \u201cNow I wish that I could record it every time he talks about stuff.\u201d It would come in handy as she gathers plants from the landscape around her home in Bluff, Utah, and turns them into paper.<\/p>\n

Aitchison is primarily a printmaker and papermaker. In her Bluff studio, handmade sheets, beautiful in their own right, become the grounds for layered monotypes of rivers, cliffs, vegetation and sky\u2014the landscape that has kept drawing her back to the Southwest.<\/p>\n

Aitchison left Flagstaff for Colorado College in Colorado Springs, where she studied art and discovered printmaking. After graduation she spent a winter in Taos with painter Elise Frank, then returned to Flagstaff before deciding to apply to graduate school. Somewhat to her own surprise, she got into the Rhode Island School of Design.\u00a0\u201cIt took me out of this place,\u201d she says, \u201cand so I had this kinda different perspective on the Southwest, \u2019cause I wasn\u2019t there.\u201d At RISD she found herself among artists whose interests could be radically different from her own. \u201cPeople were doing all kinds of different things that were very unrelated to what I was doing,\u201d she says. It helped her \u201csee my work in relation to what else was going on instead of being saturated in landscape stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

After earning her MFA, Aitchison stayed in Providence and taught at RISD. Her future husband, Brian, was working at AS220, a community arts organization with a massive printing press donated by RISD, its printable bed measuring five by ten feet. Aitchison put it to use. \u201cI was making these gigantic monotypes of dams for my thesis,\u201d she says. Human intervention in the landscape was an explicit subject of her work: dams and other built structures imposed on natural systems. Over time, the intervention has become less literal. The dam largely disappeared from the picture. The paper underneath it became more important.<\/p>\n

Despite building a successful life in Providence, Aitchison kept coming West. She spent summers working on the rivers, including in the Grand Canyon. Eventually Brian began river work as well. Their lives developed an east-west rhythm: teaching and art in Providence, rivers and desert in the West.<\/p>\n

That included Bluff and the San Juan. Her father had brought her through the southeastern Utah town several times when she was young. She knew it and its river well. When, in 2019, they saw a house for sale, they jumped. \u201cIt was a really good price, and it just worked out,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

The following year provided an unexpected trial run for life in Bluff. Aitchison and Brian were visiting when COVID shut down schools. Her teaching moved online. His nursing school did the same. There was suddenly no reason to return immediately to Providence. \u201cWe just stayed here because we didn\u2019t have to go back,\u201d she says. \u201cYou would just go outside every day and not really have to worry,\u201d she recalls. \u201cIt was like, \u2018Oh, this is actually really nice.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

After the shutdowns they returned to Providence. But in 2023, they decided to make Bluff their permanent home. \u201cWe just really liked the landscape,\u201d she says. \u201cThat was the major draw.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

It would be easy to turn their decision into the familiar story of the artist escaping the city for the inspirational solitude of the desert, Georgia O\u2019Keeffe style. Aitchison doesn’t. \u201cSometimes I love it and sometimes I wish it was bigger,\u201d she admits.<\/p>\n

Bluff is beautiful. But it is also small and isolated, its economy largely dependent on seasonal tourism, public-sector employment and retiree income. Moving there meant figuring out how to sustain both an artistic practice and an ordinary life.<\/p>\n

The answer, at least so far, has involved doing a little bit of everything. Brian works as a nurse and is also a screen printer. Aitchison teaches workshops and classes and continues to pursue exhibitions and residencies outside Bluff. She has taught at Anderson Ranch in Snowmass and works with Mancos Common Press in nearby southwestern Colorado. She has collaborated with scientists and is part of an artist-in-residence duo at The Nature Conservancy\u2019s Dugout Ranch.<\/p>\n

She also helps run the Cow Canyon Coffee Shop. She and Brian convinced his sister, Hannah, to move west with them. Hannah had worked as a barista for years in Brooklyn, but \u201cneither of us knew anything about opening a business,\u201d she says. \u201cI think if we had thought about it too much, we probably wouldn\u2019t have done it.\u201d<\/p>\n

They lease the building from Liza Doran, who runs the Cow Canyon Trading Post next door. The coffee shop is part cafe, part bookstore, part gallery, and it fills a conspicuous hole in a town with few places to gather. It also began to occupy more and more of Aitchison’s time. \u201cThe coffee shop just took over our lives for a couple years,\u201d she says. During the first year, she and Hannah did nearly everything together as they tried to figure out how the business worked. Eventually Aitchison reached a point where she had to pull away. \u201cI was like, \u2018Okay, no, this is not what I\u2019m trying to do.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n