What has been the focus of your recent studio work and why?

My recent studio work pre-Covid-19 was in preparation for my Stories exhibition, focusing on two major themes: my family as a palette and my engagement in social issues. I incorporated my knowledge and experience with folkloric tales and practices into many different materials, including found objects, metal, embroidery, knotting, sewing, paper cut-outs, coat hangers, fishing swivels, photographs, gallery furnishings, and pieces from past shows in a new iterations. 

During the Covid-19 seclusion, I have returned to an unfinished project, making what I call “Mammoforms” from styrofoam and expansion foam cores covered in paper clay. I am also beginning an experimental aluminum mesh piece, which mirrors one which I am finishing in my Brooklyn studio. The original piece was made using a cut-out pattern and assembled in Dallas, and is experimentally being covered in paper clay. The new piece in Dallas will be the flip side of the cut-out pattern and can be made in my home kitchen.

You work with many mediums and are not afraid to push your creativity, what ties your work together?

My films have always been self-expository. I try to show my thinking in a visual way. In “King of the Mountain” I refer to the folkloric children’s game through watching how goats play with each other. Similarly, in “Bird Brains,” I connect the mating ritual of birds to thumb-wrestling.

In “Alexander the Infant” I showed what nursing a baby looked like from the mother’s point of view. I used the foibles and behavior patterns of my son to represent childhood, and my own obsessive behavior as being a female artist.

I use metal because of my expertise in welding and cutting, juxtaposed elements of my childhood training in needlework.  

Book art became another medium of mine during the 1990s, when I codirected the first book art gallery in Dallas. I learned from other artists work during this time and taught myself the skills I needed. I was very experimental and invented many new forms of books. Many of my editioned books have been acquired by many museum collections, which helped to validate me as an artist. Socially, I became more confident in pursuing equality for women artists and began using my voice to advocate in a unique kind of social practice. My metal and handicraft mash-up sculptures and collage works all relate to social issues, though occasionally I revert to more basic forms of expression.

Having a studio in Dallas and one in Brooklyn change the way you work?

Working away from my Dallas studio was a challenge, but bringing work with me that was started helped me to overcome the coldness that I felt at first. I called the experience "bring a yeast starter to the studio." Eventually, I began to source materials and make connections with other artists and galleries. I began to collect found materials to work from in the same way as I did in my Dallas studio. 

What have you been reading lately?

I have been reading belonging by bell hooks, which was recommended to me by Catherine Morris, the curator who included me in a show now on view at the Brooklyn Museum’s “Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art."

I am also reading Joan Dideon’s “The Year of Magical Thinking,” as I prepare myself for the impending death of my terminally ill brother and the celebration of his life that I will lead after his burial.

about kaleta doolin

Kaleta Doolin attended Southern Methodist University’s Meadows School of the Arts, where she earned her B.F.A. in art in 1983 and her M.F.A. in 1987. Doolin is an accomplished sculptor, who steps outside of traditional sculpture boundries to conceptualize and innovative sculpture. In January 2020, she exhibited her work in at Cedar Valley College Educational Art Gallery with artist, Elizabeth Anyaa. Doolin’s work is currently included the group exhibition - Out of Place: A Feminist Look at the Collection, at the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, Brooklyn Museum, New York (thru 13 September 2020).

Kaleta Doolin lives and works in Dallas, Texas, and Brooklyn, New York.