Kathrine Worel's work for Intimate Nature springs from her feral childhood summers in rural Oregon, where she explored forests and old barns, fell from trees, and half-hid in corners re-reading books as much for unknown cousins' marginalia as for the stories themselves. Tucked away with a book she absorbed adults' elaborately contradictory family tales and lost all fear of dismantling things to repurpose them for the moment at hand. This formative sensibility explains why Worel's seemingly unrelated work consistently emphasizes the liminal and tactile qualities of both material and imaginary surfaces. She embraces what she calls "precision randomness" to drive her practice, combining turn-of-the-century wallpapering techniques with appropriated advertising imagery, handcrafted elements, and multiples to build layers and forms. The significant time required between steps allows her to slowly evolve each object narrative—beginning with traditional techniques, then experimenting with productive accidents. By abstracting the materials and processes of craft, Worel pushes beyond the decorative or utilitarian, rendering the everyday absurd and uncanny.

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Kathrine Worel is a multimodal artist and curator currently based in Oakland, CA. Worel earned her MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in New Genres, studied Liberal and Fine Arts at San Francisco State University, and ceramics at the Francisco Alcántara School Of Ceramic Art in Madrid, Spain. Her works are held in private collections in the US, Europe, Japan and Hong Kong.