Curatorial Practice
Katherine Gemperline holds an MFA in Curatorial Studies from the University of Kentucky and dual BAs in Studio Art, with a concentration in Painting and Drawing, and Computer Science from Xavier University. Since July 2025, she has served as the Kenneth R. Trapp Craft Assistant/Curatorial Fellow at Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts, where she researches, develops, and curates exhibitions of contemporary American art and craft.
Gemperline's curatorial practice explores the relationship between artistic expression, cultural values, and aesthetic conventions. Her research follows two interconnected interests: examining how established aesthetic and artistic hierarchies shape perceptions of beauty, morality, and artistic value, and investigating how artists communicate personal, cultural, and social experiences through their work. While these interests inform her practice in different ways, both reflect a broader curiosity about how art communicates meaning and how that meaning is shaped by the cultural contexts in which it is created and experienced.
Her current research focuses on the intersection of art, craft, and design, particularly within the Appalachian region. Through exhibitions such as Crafted in the Mountains: An Evolution of Appalachian Craft, she examines the evolving relationship between functional craft, market-driven design, and contemporary artistic expression. Other projects, including One Bead at a Time, explore the significance of artistic processes, materiality, repetition, and intuition, considering how traditional techniques can serve as vehicles for individual expression and contemporary artistic experimentation.
Her earlier curatorial research examined the grotesque and abjection as artistic strategies for confronting aesthetic conventions and communicating complex human experiences. In Beyond Grotesque: Contemporary Artists Confronting Abjection, she explored how contemporary artists challenge the association between physical beauty and moral goodness through distorted bodies and unsettling imagery. Similarly, Disordered Creatures examined how artists employ metaphorical creatures to externalize anxieties, fears, and traumas, encouraging viewers to empathize with psychological experiences beyond their own.
Across these projects, Gemperline approaches curating as an opportunity to investigate the relationships between artistic practices and the cultural narratives that surround them. Through research, interpretation, and exhibition development, she seeks to create opportunities for audiences to question familiar assumptions, encounter alternative perspectives, and develop a deeper understanding of the ways artists interpret and respond to the world.
Publications:
2027 Planned Vantage Point: Looking Back and Moving Forward Catalog, print
2025 Beyond Grotesque: Contemporary Artists Confronting Abjection Catalog, online catalog
Mentions:
2026 Crafted in the Mountains: Traces the History of Appalachian Craft by Robert Alan Grand; American Craft Council;
February 23, 2026. Link to digital article
Artistic Practice
Katherine Gemperline holds an MFA in Curatorial Studies from the University of Kentucky and dual BAs in Studio Art (Painting and Drawing) and Computer Science from Xavier University. She has served as Kenneth R. Trapp Craft Assistant/Curatorial Fellow at Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts since July 2025.
Gemperline’s current practice examines the intersection of meditation, escapism, and dissociation within the context of contemporary socio-political instability. In an environment shaped by persistent anxiety and informational, sometimes fraudulent, overload, her work emerges from an ongoing negotiation between the necessity of remaining informed and the psychological toll of sustained attention. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, she has sought material and process-based strategies that create space for both withdrawal and reflection.
Moving beyond her earlier focus on painting and drawing, Gemperline uses beadwork as a durational, repetitive practice. The meticulous act of stringing individual beads becomes a form of meditation, allowing thoughts to drift, fragment, and reassemble.
The resulting works take the form of mundane, everyday objects, reconstructed through accumulated labor. Their apparent normality stands in tension with the excessive time required to produce them, creating a quiet absurdity that calls attention to value, attention, and purpose. This juxtaposition prompts viewers to question not only the object's function but also the systems of meaning and labor that assign value.
While essentially functionless, Gemperline’s finished sculptures are meant to be more than just objects to view. Viewers are invited to interact physically with the objects, as simply as touching the beads to feel their texture or tossing them back and forth to feel their weight. This sensory experience further draws the viewer into the minute details of the work.
Her practice draws inspiration from artists such as Wendy Ellsworth, David Chatt, Liza Lou, and Carly Owens Weiss, whose materially intensive processes similarly interrogate labor, perception, and the aesthetics of the everyday.
Exhibitions:
The Big Tiny Show, The District Gallery, Knoxville, TN, November 13, 2026 - January 9, 2027
100&Under: Small Works, The Arrowmont Gallery, Knoxville, TN, May 1 - May 30, 2026