Katherine Westerhout

Katherine Westerhout adopts once magnificent ruins as the subjects of her work, capturing abandoned civic and industrial building interiors for her architectural portraits. The artist has corresponded with preservationists and urban "spelunkers," to find and document interesting buildings in locations around the United States, from Detroit to Philadelphia, Yonkers to Gary, Indiana. Gaining inspiration from her dreams, Westerhout views the building interiors as reflections of our own psyche and more specifically our attitudes towards community spaces and preservation in this day and age. Instead of seeing the spaces as dilapidated remains, the artist believes that they hold a "magical presence" obtained over the years of exchange and emotion that have filled the space.