Art Location
Snell Engineering Center
Boston, MA 02115
Katy Ann Gilmore
Tethered in Space
Sept. 17-30, 2019
Los Angeles-based visual artist Katy Ann Gilmore combines her background in art and mathematics to transform ordinary, flat surfaces into complex three-dimensional webs of line work and illusion. She completes each detail by hand using paint, pens, markers, and a digital level. The plans for her murals look like blueprints, an appropriate starting point, since she draws a lot of her inspiration from architecture.
Her mural at Northeastern’s Snell Engineering Center features thousands of lines that slowly cascade toward a central vanishing point, a technique that requires a steady hand and many calculations. Her vision for the Snell mural: she wanted people to feel as if they could reach into a portal.
“I like leaving traces that a human made this. I’m not perfect. Nothing human is perfect.”
—Katy Ann Gilmore, on why some of the slight imperfections in her work are her favorite parts
Gilmore’s work, which also includes sculpture and installation art, has been exhibited across the country, and she includes Google, Uber, and Facebook as clients who have commissioned her to create murals at their offices. In 2017, she commissioned herself to create a mural to cover her first car, a 2002 Nissan Maxima.