KATE NORRIS

THE CLOSER YOU LOOK THE MORE YOU SEE

Mixed Media Collage

Through birds, hands, and human anatomy, I explore living systems at different scales—how natural and human forms are structured, connected, and sustained. Drawing from vintage scientific illustrations, I create works using torn and layered wallpaper alongside painted, atmospheric backgrounds that allow form to emerge gradually.

Wallpaper functions in my work as a material language rooted in domestic space, memory, and the human desire for beauty. Familiar and intimate, it becomes skin, plumage, and landscape, while paint introduces light, breath, and space. Decoration here is not secondary to structure; it is part of how form, experience, and meaning are held together—revealing the quiet rhythms that shape our relationship to the natural world.

Kate Norris, Baltimore, MD