Katie Heller Saltoun - The American Scholar

At the onset of the pandemic, Katie Heller Saltoun began to render domestic scenes of her quarantined family—herself, her husband, and their three kids—in collage and ink. Originally, she omitted herself from the pieces, but over time, she started to humorously insert herself into the everyday chaos: curled up in the dishwasher or wryly appraising the viewer. Now, her artwork embodies “the overwhelming feelings or the excitement, all the kind of mixed emotions of motherhood,” she says. “It is so much more important [for viewers] to get this out of the work rather than just observing what I’m seeing in my home.” Her latest series of ink drawings is currently on view as part of a group show called Bifocal: Motherhood & Creativity at the Elza Kayal Gallery in New York.

Saltoun first maps out her drawings by piecing together photographs she’s taken of her children— Doll Bin, for example, depicts her daughter sprawled asleep between two toy boxes, but originated from a photograph that Saltoun took of her daughter dozing in the backseat of her car. “Tenderness is definitely there,” she says of her work. “On the flip side, I want there to be an edgy quality to it —grit and steel and dark humor to the whole experience of mothering.” Her depictions of this duality particularly resonated with the women in her MFA program at Pratt Institute, which Saltoun completed two years ago, but she hopes that her work reaches beyond those with children. “I think it connects to a lot of people’s stories,” she says.