Katie Simmons

Katie Simmons is an artist, educator, and wildlife biologist from the foothills of the Appalachian mountains in east Tennessee. She has undergraduate degrees in art history, visual art, and wildlife biology and her M.A. in education. Katie is currently an MFA candidate and drawing instructor at Colorado State University. For her work, she finds plants, lichens, and fungi from which pigments can be extracted and applies these to surfaces on which she creates drawings in ballpoint pen. She has also recently begun to create fibers-based sculptural bodily forms. Her art investigates death, decay, growth, and the exploitation of the natural world and female bodies. Specifically, she’s fascinated by the otherness of her own body after experiencing the trauma of being abducted, held against her will, and sexually assaulted by a stranger while studying abroad in Italy. Her art is a return to these events and embraces two aesthetics: one of uneasiness, uncertainty, and anxiety and the other of reassurance, wonderment, and hope.

Katie’s artwork has been exhibited internationally in group and solo shows in Colorado, Illinois, Italy, Kansas, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Tennessee, and Washington D.C.. Her research on feminist aesthetics, the uncanny, and the commodification of bodies through sex trafficking has also been presented at regional and national conferences and is currently under review for publication. Katie is an Arc Gallery Athena Fund Finalist, the recipient of the Charlie and Gwen Hatchette Creativity Award, the recipient of a residency at the Oregon Coast School of Art, and a member of a transdisciplinary group of scientists and artists in Colorado who received two NSF grants for 2023 - 2026. After finishing her MFA, Katie plans to pursue her PhD in anthropology and continue teaching in order to make art and art education more inclusive and accessible. In her spare time she enjoys ultra trail running and spending time with her family.