Kristine Barrett has been a musician and visual artist for most of her life. When she moved from her hometown of Marshalltown in central Iowa to Kansas City to attend college, she discovered the personal computer as a tool for composition. Empowered by the speed of her new tools and inspired by the agricultural landscape of her home, she set to work exploring where she came from and the aesthetics of simplicity in an ongoing dialog between artist and environment. Kristine’s work pulls from an eclectic pool of sources, including folk songs, mythology, art history, film and literature. In particular, the oral traditions of Celtic mythology inform her work, the cyclical nature of which finds harmonious alignment with her compositional practices. There is a respiration in her work that shows a deep appreciation for things past as well as aptitude for relaying the story of her heritage to audiences in a media saturated present.
Kristine studied art history and new media at the Kansas City Art Institute and is currently in her last semester in the Electronic Music MFA program at Mills.
Islanded by Fields; the Beginning of a Life
By Kristine Barrett, with Luis Maurette, Paul Scriver, Marielle Jakobsons, and Agnes Szelag
“Islanded by Fields; the Beginning of a Life” is an exploration of the terrestrial and the personal landscape. Through the lens of the creation myth of the Sumerian goddess Inanna (and her later incarnations Ishtar, Anu, and Anna, mother of Mary) flesh is painted on the surface of a desolate Iowa prairie. The prairie introduces a journey starting inside the womblike hill, to a lonely place of self discovery. The visual elements speak of a dialog between creation myth and the communicative undulations of the Earth. The sound is a steady reminder that to commune with the field, it takes introspection and the courage to look at oneself without shelter, and with new skin.