Kathy A. Halamka entered the professional art world at the age
of 12 by exhibiting in galleries and regularly competing in
scholarship and community art competitions. She earned her Bachelor of
Arts Degree in Studio Art from Stanford University in 1984 while
working as a graphic artist. Concurrently studying art and psychology,
Kathy interned with Dr. William C. Dement and Dr. Mary Carskadon in
the Stanford Summer Sleep Camp Research Program, and with Stephen
LaBerge PhD in his early studies on lucid dreaming. Continuing to
exhibit in juried shows throughout the United States, she is entering
the Master of Fine Arts graduate degree program at the Tufts
University/School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston in the autumn
of 2002.
Artist's Statement
In-between states and spaces have
always fascinated me because they are beyond simple understanding.
Dreams are an exceptional example of the power of the in-between.
Anthropologists use the terms liminal or betwixt and between to refer
to the creative state of being out of ordinary time and space. My own
lifelong liminality as a first generation Korean American of mixed
ancestry and cross-cultural influences has always been integral to my
art making. I find the complexity of construction, translation,
concealment, and renewal in the creation of dream-based art becomes
metaphorical for our contemporary relationship to our multifaceted
lives and our rapidly accelerating culture. "Embrace,"
"Limina," and "Guidance" each explore lucid dreams
recorded in a dream journal. Selecting and composing images to
photograph occurs at my threshold response between conscious design
and the intuitive. These images symbolically bridge waking and
dreaming states, reaching for a tangible dream language.
