#kate welsh

[alliwanttodoiscollectpoetry]

Minerva Dressing

Minerva Dressing by Livia Fontana

Minerva Dressing by Kate Welsh (after Lavinia Fontana (1613))

Through the doorway to the balcony, the sky is the dark blue of dusk or dawn or stormy day. St. Peter’s hazy dome appears cumulous; an olive tree reaches its fine branches up, up; a black owl scrapes its talons on the balustrade. Inside, the floor is strewn with armor, with weaponry—her shield against the bureau; her breastplate on the tile. Sitting in the threshold, a blond cherub gazes into the iron shine of the red-feathered helmet, too taken with himself to admire the nude goddess in front of him. She has just returned or she is readying to leave; her body turned from us, her eyes on us, looking at us who look at her: her dark hair constellated in pearls; her back of quiet muscle. In her hands, a diaphanous, gold-threaded gown. Worn, it will do nothing to conceal her body. It will only make her more like the moon, bright-faced and still unfathomable.

[arkhamkjay]

would you fuck your clone: umbrella academy edition.

[books-in-a-storm]

A Romance Novel A Day Keeps All The Boys Away

The Texas Ranger’s Heiress Wife-Kate Welsh 💜

[factoronto]

MEET THE FAC 2019 RESIDENCY ARTISTS: KATE WELSH

How do you intend to move forward in your field of education with the topic of feminism? I am constantly trying to seek out new forms of media and listen to the views of different people. I hope I can help amplify the voices of equity seeking people. I hope that my life includes constant learning.

Crip Care Card: Rainbow Vomit

Being sicks sucks, this card acknowledges sometimes the only thing you can do is laugh. Inspired by the rainbow vomit Snapchat filter. In this project, as an intersectional feminist artist, I knew that representation was crucial. The skin tone on this card can be interpreted in many ways and reflects an alternative to traditional greeting cards which perpetuate white supremacy by excluding people of colour.

What does affirmation mean to you (in reference to your intended project, a card deck of affirmations)?

I am not sure if I am doing this project anymore. I am thinking of writing a disability justice children's book, which will include affirmations! I think affirmations are the things we all need to hear to validate our own unique experiences.

Crip Care Card: Self-Care and Resilience

Self-Care is not self-indulgent or selfish, it’s about the day to day things we must do in order to survive life. The way we manage our health, our bodies, our spirits. This card is a reminder that we need to be gentle with ourselves especially when it’s easy to blame our bodies and circumstances for how badly we may feel.

What do you find therapeutic about crafting? What do you hope to achieve with your own crafts of the facilitation of sessions?

I love playing and learning new things. I love trying and failing and trying again. I think crafting can teach us that failure can be positive and help us move forward, especially in this society that is so high pressure. Crafting allows failure in a safe environment.

Crip Care Card: Congratulations!

Finally getting a diagnosis is often cause for celebration, finally having a name for all the misery is a possible way forward. Having a diagnostic name can be a start to finding community and support. Getting a name can take forever and may bring a lot of mixed feelings but it’s important to celebrate what we can.

Follow Kate: @queerkate on IG @cripcarecrafts on IG creativitycoachTO.com katewelsh.ca

[thewhistleandtheflute]

Kate Welsh and unknown model both wear Armani, photographed by Sebastian Lang for BlurArt magazine, February 2014.

[wolffolinsblog]

HTML Guts

By Kate Welsh

Facebook has recently started to feel a lot like my dialed-up, parental-controlled, You’ve Got Mail AOL inbox. I just wish the fake copyright “communiqué” spread via the statuses of my normally sane Facebook friends was as snarkily charming as the old email chains that once threatened “bad sex for the next seven years” unless they were forwarded to at least 10 Instant Messenger Buddies.  Semper par, my 11-year old self compulsively clicked “Forward.”

The attempt to control online privacy via this (see here) pseudo-legal, paranoid post belies a deep mistrust of the polished graphics and seamless ease of corporate websites. “What’s behind the curtain?” we wonder—and then resort to the mumbo-jumbo virus chain of our lo-fi childhood.

To get back to that simpler, more authentic world, many digital designers have reverted to that 1.0 aesthetic. Deliberately clunky, GIF-heavy web design lets the consumer in on the joke. 

By exposing some of their HTML guts, companies indicate that they aren’t out to trick you with ads that look like real websites, and they appeal to an increasingly DIY, maker economy.

Check out these additional examples of dial-up nostalgia:

Ryan Trecartin's "Web 1.0" via DIS Magazine

Kenzo's "Kenzine"

Kate Welsh is a strategy intern at Wolff Olins New York

[wolffolinsblog]

Infograph Epoch

By Kate Welsh

How does a corporate behemoth build trust in a world that is—to put it lightly—increasingly skeptical of big businesses?

Last week, Wolff Olins had the opportunity to meet Camille Kubie, the founder and former leader of GE’s visualization team, at our weekly Share in New York. GE, inspired by MoMA’s 2008 Design and Elastic Mind exhibition, decided to take advantage of the massive amount of data that they had accumulated from the sale and usage of their industrial, healthcare, and energy manufacturing products (GE sources their data from sensors attached to their products, as well as reports from utility companies and the U.S. Department of Energy and Environmental Protection Agency). They believed that consumers wanted to see more transparency from corporations, especially in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis.

Kubie showed us Smart Money’s “Map of the Market” and Aaron Koblin’s gorgeous visualization of flight patterns as her inspiration. Both manage to synthesize almost laughably huge amounts of data—the stock market and global airline flights—and present them using innovative visual displays and rich graphs and maps. One of GE’s early experiments with data visualization engaged consumers with their own energy costs. A visitor to the site could choose a home appliance and see how much its usage cost in watts, dollars and gallons of gas per year, month or day, state by state. If I stopped making toast in the morning, I could save 19.65$/year. (ATTN popcorn popper users of New York: That appliance uses more energy than your unit A/C, refrigerator, and computer combined.)

GE has definitely tapped into the “turn everything into an infograph” trend. Since the 2011 launch of the community platform Visual.ly, which allows users to easily create their own infographics, the Internet has become saturated with data visualizations as varied as one about the borough-to-borough artistic merit of graffiti in NYC to the process of hearing loss. In 2011, GE’s “Stats of the Union” was the second most popular iPad app in the U.S. Kubie herself uses the visualization platform, visualizing.org, which uses beautifully designed visual analytics to illuminate weighty policy issues.

Infographics utilize the idea that the brain can more easily process dynamic images rather than lists of numbers. But the best visualizations do more than animate bits of data. They elicit visceral comprehension and moments of insight that make viewers want to discover more. News outlets such as the Guardian, The New York Times, and Newsweek have made high profile use of data visualizations (see NYT Olympics Men’s 100 Meter Sprint, Newsweek best countries)—thus solidifying their positions as prescient, intellectually curious idea generators, rather than just news aggregators.

What does this mean for brands? GE successfully engaged people who might otherwise never think about the greater implications and responsibilities of the global manufacturing company—except in the context of the financial crisis. Brands can take engagement a step further. Data visualization helps companies gain insight into consumer behavior, but they can also show how their products respond to their consumers’ needs. GE could show how a new line of washing machines saves water and money. A foundation could show the far-reaching impact of their grant making. Data visualization can do more than offer a patina of transparency—it can help a brand achieve a higher purpose and become more useful to its customers.

Kate Welsh is a strategy intern at Wolff Olins New York.

Image via Aaron Koblin