Interviews by Brainard Carey

Katie Simmons is an artist, educator, and wildlife biologist from the Appalachian mountains in east Tennessee. She holds baccalaureate degrees in art history, visual art, and wildlife biology and her MA in education and MFA in drawing and fiber art. Katie is an instructor of drawing and fiber art at Colorado State University and Front Range Community College. Her artwork has been exhibited internationally in numerous group and solo shows in the United States, western Europe and South America. Her research on feminist aesthetics, the uncanny, and the commodification of bodies through sex trafficking has also been published and presented at regional and national conferences. Katie has been the recipient of the Charlie and Gwen Hatchette Creativity Award, the Keith Foskin MFA Scholarship, the Boynes Artist Award, the Oak Springs Garden Foundation Residency, Centrum Residency, and a finalist for the Women United Art Prize and Prisma Art Prize. She is also a vocal advocate for the Sexual Assault Victim Advocate Center in Colorado. In her free time, Katie loves ultra trail running, spending time with her family, and watching bad tv with her dog.

Katie’s work has most recently been exhibited in a solo exhibit at Metropolitan Community College’s Gallery of Art and Design and she has upcoming shows this spring and summer at the Sanger Gallery in Key West, Florida, the Gregory Allicar Museum of Art in Fort Collins, Colorado and Manifest Gallery in Cincinnati, Ohio. 

Pinecone Quilt I (Side A and B) 2025 Plastic refuse, embroidery thread, found curtains and bed sheets with ballpoint pen drawing and homemade walnut bark ink 85 x 85”
Digitalis purpurea, 2025 Ballpoint pen and ecoprinted common foxglove (Digitalis purpurea) on silk 70 x 48”
Invasive Species I: Rubus phoenicolasius, 2025. Ballpoint pen and homemade natural dye made from wineberry (Rubus phoenicolasius) on cardstock, 50 x 38″

Paul Scott in print studio with cut Wild Rose detail
Paul Scott (b. 1953, United Kingdom) is a UK-based artist, living and working in Cumbria, with a diverse practice and an international reputation. Creating individual pieces that blur the boundaries between fine art, craft, and design, he is well known for his research into printed vitreous surfaces, as well as his characteristic blue-and-white artworks in glazed ceramic.

Scott’s artworks can be found in public collections around the globe, including the National Museum, Norway; the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK; National Museums Liverpool; the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA; and the Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY. Commissioned work can be found in a number of UK museums, as well as in public places in the north of England, including Carlisle, Maryport, Gateshead, and Newcastle upon Tyne. He has also completed large-scale works in Hanoi, Vietnam, and at the Guldagergård public sculpture park in Denmark.

A combination of rigorous research, studio practice, curation, writing, and commissioned work ensures that his practice continues to develop. His work is fundamentally concerned with the reanimation of familiar objects, landscape, pattern, and a sense of place. He was professor of ceramics at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts (KHiO) from 2011–2018. Scott received his Bachelor of Art Education and Design from Saint Martin’s College and his PhD from the Manchester Institute for Research and Innovation in Art and Design in England. His current research project, New American Scenery, has been supported by an Alturas Foundation artist award, Ferrin Contemporary, and funding from Arts Council England.

Cumbrian Blue(s), New American Scenery, Souvenir of Portland OR Black Lives Matter (After Killen & Howard)/Trumpian Campaigne, No.5, 2021. Transfer print collage on partially erased Staffordshire transferware souvenir plate by Rowland & Marsellus, c.1900
10.25″ Dia. x 1” D
Cumbrian Blue(s), New American Scenery, Residual Waste (Texas) No.5/1, 2022
Transfer print collage, shell-edged pearlware platter, 13″ H x 17.25″ W x 1.25” D
Cumbrian Blue(s), New American Scenery, The Sleep of Reason, Wood Cuts (After Spode’s Woodland/Wild Rose) 2, 2024
Transfer print collage on pearlware plate with Kintsugi, 11″ Dia. x 0.5″ D
Cumbrian Blue(s), New American Scenery, Sampler Jug, No.7 (After Stubbs), 2021
Transfer print collage on pearlware jug, 15″ H x 14″ W x 11.75″ D

Aglaé Bassens, Photo: Jenny Gorman
Aglaé Bassens (b. 1986, Belgium) has a BA in Fine Art from the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, Oxford University (2007) and an MFA in Fine Art Painting from the Slade School of Fine Art, London (2011). Her work has been exhibited internationally, with solo presentations at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami; HESSE FLATOW, New York; 12.26, Dallas; Nars Foundation, Brooklyn; CRUSH Curatorial, New York; and Cabin Gallery, London; as well as group exhibitions at Gowen Contemporary, Geneva; STEMS Gallery, Paris; The Valley, Taos; and Workplace Gallery, London. Bassens’s works can be found in the permanent collections of the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami and Colección SOLO, Madrid, Spain. She lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

Aglaé Bassens (b. 1986) What was that, 2025 Oil on canvas 39 3/8 x 51 1/8 inches. Photo courtesy of the artist and HESSE FLATOW, New York. Photo: Jenny Gorman.
Aglaé Bassens (b. 1986) Stone Tiles, 2025 Oil on canvas 51 1/8 x 39 3/8 inches. Photo courtesy of the artist and HESSE FLATOW, New York. Photo: Jenny Gorman.
Aglaé Bassens (b. 1986), Deflated, 2025, Oil on canvas, 51 1/8 x 39 3/8 inches. Photo courtesy of the artist and HESSE FLATOW, New York. Photo: Jenny Gorman.

Janet Echelman is an artist known for sculpting at the scale of buildings and city blocks, creating large-scale, fluid installations that merge art, architecture, and engineering. Her work transforms with wind and light, inviting viewers into immersive experiences rather than static observation. Echelman uses unconventional materials—from atomized water particles to fiber stronger than steel—blending traditional craft with advanced computational design. Her monumental works anchor public spaces across five continents, in cities including New York, London, Sydney, Shanghai, and Singapore.

Permanent installations in locations such as San Francisco, Vancouver, and Porto continually evolve with shifting light and air. Echelman’s unconventional path includes a degree from Harvard, five years living in a Balinese village, and graduate studies in both painting and psychology. Oprah ranked Echelman’s work #1 on her List of 50 Things That Make You Say Wow!, and she received the Smithsonian American Ingenuity Award in Visual Arts, honoring “the greatest innovators in America today.” Recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship, she has taught at MIT, Harvard, and Princeton. Her interdisciplinary approach challenges artistic boundaries and redefines urban space through experiential public art.

Her recent book, Radical Softness The Responsive Art of Janet Echelman is now available.

Remembering the Future, on view at MIT Museum, and its maquette at Sarasota Art Museum retrospective. Photos: Anna Olivella
Study (Butterfly Rest Stop 1/9 scale), on view at Janet Echelman: Radical Softness, Sarasota Art Museum through April 26, 2026. Photo: Ryan Gamma.
Noli Timere, Echelman’s sculpture-dance collaboration with choreographer Rebecca Lazier, currently traveling the eastern seaboard. Photos: Julie Lemberger

Isaac Lythgoe is a sculptor, painter and writer based In Paris, FR. His practice is world-building; reimagining narrative traditions and modes of storytelling, he creates interconnected works that probe power structures, contemporary ethics, and shifting social norms. Within this constructed universe, arcs of romance and mortality intersect, inviting viewers to consider how collective memory is formed—and what future societies might resemble. This temporal drift between past and future is mirrored in Lythgoe’s aesthetic language, where tensions between the natural and the synthetic unfold through form, material, and gesture.

Recent and forthcoming shows include Phantasmagoria: Folkloric Sculpture for the Digital Age, The Henry Moore Institute, Leeds, UK, (2026), Would I lie to you, Duarte Sequeira, Seoul, KR (2024), Production Residency at Lafayette Anticipations, Paris, FR, (2024), Cute!, Somerset House, London, UK, (2024), After Laughter Comes Tears, MUDAM, Luxembourg, LX, (2023) amongst others.

Beautiful losers, 180cm x 140cm, oil on canvas, 2025.

I pretended there was nowhere to love, 80cm x 60cm, oil on canvas, 2025

Everyone’s a bad guy, 110cm x 80cm x 80cm fibreglass, carbon fibre, epoxy, cast aluminium, scarab beetles