About the Artist

Short Biography

Bay Area visual Artist Katina Huston was born in San Francisco in 1961 and was raised in the city. She is best known for drawings of shadows in ink on mylar.
Ms. Huston earned a B.A. from New York University, followed by an MFA from Mills College in 1995. Ms. Huston teaches art and art history at colleges and universities including California State University, California College of the Arts and St. Mary’s College. 

Ms. Huston’s works are exhibited nationally and internationally and are held in collections both private and public: Dolby Studios, Chase International, Steven Wynn Collection, Clay Museum of Art and Science, San Francisco Fine Arts Museum, Achenbach Collection, and Yale University Art Gallery.

“She has piled up shadows… that wink with recognizable details but finally force the eye to surrender to their sheer graphic brilliance.” – Kenneth Baker, 2005

Full Biography

Bay Area visual Artist Katina Huston was born in San Francisco in 1961 and was raised in the city. That is a colorless depiction of a colorful time. Think hippies and Panthers, Pride and White Nights, plus the Loma Prieta earthquake. San Francisco was and sometimes still is ground that shifts under your feet.

In turn Ms. Huston, through drawings of shadows and other works, documents her effort to capture a moving target.

In 1984 she earned a B.A. from New York University. A minor in computer science left her with several obsolete computer programming languages and a love for algorithms and logic.

Upon graduation, Ms. Huston took up the task of becoming an artist, seeking dexterity in multiple materials. The vocabulary of her work changes with the content. As a result she found subjects in new materials and techniques—because an object made from paper does not mean the same thing when made from iron. Similarly, new subjects required her to find new means and materials.

Important stops include: iron casting at the University of Iowa; an introduction to multimedia and conceptual arts through Hans Breder and the Headlands Center for the Arts; studies at New York Art Students’ League, New York; and artist residencies at St. John’s University, Minnesota, and the San Francisco dump.

Returning to San Francisco in time for the earthquake (Loma Prieta, 1989), Ms. Huston made and lost a body of work. In the post-earthquake lull she took up cultural reporting, writing art criticism for several publications including New Mission News, Artweek, Ceramics Monthly, Visions Art Quarterly, New Art Examiner, and Works and Conversations.

In 1995, the artist earned an MFA from Mills College and went on to teach art and art history at California State University, California College of the Arts. At St. Mary’s College Ms. Huston taught courses in Greek thought, Great Books, writing and critical thinking plus courses in the Master’s and MBA programs.

Who would have guessed that art would become a more stable living than education? The turning point was a solo exhibition at Bryan Ohno Gallery, Seattle in 2005, which earned local and national reviews (Artnews v. IV no. 6, June 2005). These events formally introduced the body of work she is best known for: drawings of shadows in ink on mylar that exemplify making the imprint of human experience tangible. 

Ms. Huston’s works are exhibited nationally and internationally and are held in collections both private, such as Dolby Studios, Chase International, Allan Chasanoff, and public, including Clay Museum of Art and Science, San Francisco Fine Arts Museum, Achenbach Collection and Yale University Art Gallery. Articles and reviews on her work can be found in ArtNews, Artweek, Harpers, San Francisco Chronicle, Boston Globe, and Huffington Post, and more. Complete texts of articles and curriculum vitae can be found under ‘press’ at www.katinahuston.com.

In addition to her career as an artist, educator and writer Ms. Huston has been manager and curator of a collection of antique Japanese textile stencils since 2000. The digital catalog she created for the collection can be found at www.katagamiproject.com.

She currently lives, writes, and makes art on an island in the San Francisco bay off the sunny coast of Oakland.

“She has piled up shadows… that wink with recognizable details but finally force the eye to surrender to their sheer graphic brilliance.” – Kenneth Baker, 2005