ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, September 15, 1996 TAG: 9609160002
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 9 EDITION: METRO
TYPE: WHAT IS ART?
SOURCE: KEVIN KITTREDGE STAFF WRITER
"I think people in Roanoke don't appreciate this," says Katharina Chichester, who is probably right.
Chichester, a native of Germany and a Roanoke artist, was showing a visitor her work. To the traditionally minded it might stretch the definition of art beyond recognition. Hanging on the walls of her apartment are framed pictures of colored squares, paintings of circles with scratches on them, a piece of corrugated cardboard stuffed with wax and dried flowers.
One of her two works included in the current Roanoke City Art Show features several bowls, painted different colors and mounted, bottoms outward, on the wall.
"I think art for me has more to say than the question of being pretty and technique," Chichester said. "I'm not interested in technique."
Born and raised in Bonn, West Germany, Chichester was already in her 20s when she became interested in art. She had left school at age 14 to go to work - a common fate for girls in Germany in the lean years after World War II. Families devoted their scarce resources to the boys, because it was believed the girls were bound only for marriage, Chichester said.
She completed her education on her own, working days and going to school at night. Chichester eventually earned a degree in art and history from the Rheinische University in Bonn.
She came to America reluctantly in 1991, she said, when her American-born husband, Page Chichester, found a job in Washington, D.C. Struggling with both a strange country and strange language, Chichester said, she managed to make some of her best art.
"I put my situation into art," said Chichester, who was 42 when she came to America. "I don't know if it has to be true that artists have to suffer a lot. But I suffered. And if you look back, I produced really strong pieces."
They moved to Roanoke a year later, when funding for her husband's job at the Audubon Society disappeared. Page Chichester took a job in 1992 as an editor at Virginia Southwest magazine here. A free-lance writer and photographer, his photograph, "Green Night, Covington," won first place at the Roanoke City Art Show in 1995.
His wife, meanwhile, lists 15th and 16th century German painter and engraver Albrecht Durer among her influences, as well as the 20th century avant-garde German artist Joseph Beuys.
Judging from her work, it is the modern artist who has had the greater influence.
Chichester worked as a mime in Germany for years. She strives for the same emotional clarity in her art. "I like, like a mime, to reduce everything down to the main feeling or main expression," she said. "I think this is my main idea."
For example, Chichester had trouble at first with cold drinks in America. In this country, restaurants pack their drinks with ice. In Germany they do not.
To Chichester, who could not even drink American drinks in the beginning because the coldness hurt her jaw, the ice cubes were a symbol of the differences between the two countries. To represent those differences artistically, she froze bits of pigment inside ice cubes, and later let them thaw on a piece of paper - where the slowly released pigments left a rainbow wash of color.
Voila. Art.
So what is art to Chichester?
"I think it's simple. You have to do it. You have to live it. Art for me has not only technique and beauty. I think art is part of everything. I don't like to limit myself because I'm changing. I think also the term `art' is changing."
And art with it.
"There will always be a kind of avant-garde nobody can understand," said Chichester. "Then 10 years, 20 years later, those are the great artists."
LENGTH: Medium: 75 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: Jessica Surface/Staff. The art work of German-bornby CNBKatarina Chichester reflects her experience as an immigrant. color.