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photo x benjamin arnold
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Bio
Kyle Cottier (b. 1993, Louisville, KY) is a visual artist based in Knoxville, TN. Their interdisciplinary practice merges traditional basketry and woodworking techniques with sculpture, installation, and photography. Through innovative installations, Kyle explores the intersections of the natural, constructed, and digital worlds, focusing on themes of transformation—both personal and societal.
Kyle holds a BFA from the Art Academy of Cincinnati (2015) and attended the New York Studio Residency Program in Brooklyn (2014). They are currently a third-year MFA candidate in sculpture at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. From 2021 to 2022, they were an Artist-in-Residence at Arrowmont School of Arts & Crafts in the Smoky Mountains.
Kyle was awarded the International Sculpture Center’s Outstanding Student Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture Award, with their work featured in Sculpture Magazine. Their work was also included in The Museum for Art in Wood’s exhibition Vessel: Embodiment, Autonomy, and Ornament in Wood in Philadelphia. Recent exhibitions include Modular at Manifest Gallery in Cincinnati. Kyle is currently developing a new body of work funded by Tri-Star’s Current Art Fund Project Grant.
Kyle holds a BFA from the Art Academy of Cincinnati (2015) and attended the New York Studio Residency Program in Brooklyn (2014). They are currently a third-year MFA candidate in sculpture at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. From 2021 to 2022, they were an Artist-in-Residence at Arrowmont School of Arts & Crafts in the Smoky Mountains.
Kyle was awarded the International Sculpture Center’s Outstanding Student Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture Award, with their work featured in Sculpture Magazine. Their work was also included in The Museum for Art in Wood’s exhibition Vessel: Embodiment, Autonomy, and Ornament in Wood in Philadelphia. Recent exhibitions include Modular at Manifest Gallery in Cincinnati. Kyle is currently developing a new body of work funded by Tri-Star’s Current Art Fund Project Grant.
Statement
I am an interdisciplinary artist working primarily with wood and photography to create sculptural forms through the accumulation of thousands of small parts—modular units woven into larger structures. My process is rooted in repetition, weaving, and mending, guided by a logic of interdependence and preservation. These porous forms—often latticed and suspended in tension—serve as traces in the hotbed of memory, where what remains is shaped as much by absence as by presence. I approach memory as physical and provisional, a space continually unmade and rebuilt over time.
Traditional craft practices like basketry and vessel-making are central to my process, not only for their histories of containment, care, and survival, but for how they embody the relationship between form and thought. The vessel recurs in my work as a symbol of autonomy through craft—where skill becomes self-reliance—emphasizing that the value of the form lies not only in its emptiness, but in its potential to contain something meaningful. My sculptures often revolve around a central emptiness, echoing the movement of my own body in their making and referencing the liminal space between ruin and repair.
I am drawn to systems of connection—between the organic and synthetic, body and landscape, online and offline. I map these blurred boundaries through tactile, handmade forms that honor the labor of making while questioning how we engage with materiality in a digitized world. My work prioritizes non-binary solutions—structures that hold rigidity and fluidity at once, remaining open, responsive, and unresolved, held together piece by piece.
Traditional craft practices like basketry and vessel-making are central to my process, not only for their histories of containment, care, and survival, but for how they embody the relationship between form and thought. The vessel recurs in my work as a symbol of autonomy through craft—where skill becomes self-reliance—emphasizing that the value of the form lies not only in its emptiness, but in its potential to contain something meaningful. My sculptures often revolve around a central emptiness, echoing the movement of my own body in their making and referencing the liminal space between ruin and repair.
I am drawn to systems of connection—between the organic and synthetic, body and landscape, online and offline. I map these blurred boundaries through tactile, handmade forms that honor the labor of making while questioning how we engage with materiality in a digitized world. My work prioritizes non-binary solutions—structures that hold rigidity and fluidity at once, remaining open, responsive, and unresolved, held together piece by piece.
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Education
2022-25 MFA Sculpture Candidate at University of Tennessee Knoxville, Knoxville, TN 2011-15 BFA Print Media Major, Sculpture Minor from the Art Academy of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH Exhibitions 2025 everything not saved will be lost, Ewing Gallery, Knoxville, TN (thesis) 2024 Shaping the Future: National Showcase of Emerging Sculptors, 623 Smithfield St, Pittsburg, PA Form + Space, Museum of Art - DeLand, DeLand, FL Zero Art Fair, Zero Art Fair, Elizaville, NY Modular, Manifest Gallery, Cincinnati, OH Interplay, Surface Design Association, The Dairy Barn Arts Center, Athens, OH Moment by Moment, Relay Ridge, Knoxville, TN (solo) In Cahoots, Gallery 1010, Knoxville, TN [This Page is Intentionally Left Blank], Gallery 1010 Knoxville, TN TO BE NO(W)HERE, Gallery 1010, Knoxville, TN (solo) Points of Departure, Queen City Clay, Cincinnati, OH Art Gala, CAC Beardsley Community Farm, Knoxville, TN 2023 NCECA Juried Student Exhibition, 57th NCECA Conference, DAAP Reed Gallery, Cincinnati, OH This Never Happened, Mighty Mud Gallery, Knoxville, TN Dogwood Arts Regional Exhibition, Emporium Gallery, Knoxville, TN Student Scholarship Exhibition, OU School of Visual Arts Spotlight Gallery, Norman, OK Tennessee Triennial for Contemporary Art Student Exhibition, Gallery 1010, Knoxville, TN It’s a Trap!, Gallery 1010, Knoxville, TN Functional Beauty, Gallery 1010, Knoxville, TN 76th Annual Student Art Competition, Ewing Gallery, Knoxville, TN UTK Graduate Student Senate Awards Banquet, Student Union, Knoxville, TN 2022 Vessel: Embodiment, Autonomy, and Ornament in Wood, The Museum for Art in Wood, Philadelphia, PA The Shape I'm In, 44th Annual Tri State Sculptors Conference, Richardson Arts Center, Spartanburg, SC Mid-South Sculpture Alliance Scholarship Artists, K Space Gallery, Corpus Christi, TX Octocalypse, Downtown Gallery, Knoxville, TN Your Hand in the Shape of a Cup of Tea - Just This, Able Trade Gallery, Knoxville, TN Party of Five, Sandra J. Blain Galleries, Arrowmont School of Arts and Craft, Gatlinburg, TN One Year Later, Appalachian Center for Craft, Cookeville, TN 2021 Longue Durée, Holland Tunnel Gallery, Newburgh, NY Artists-In-Residence, Wolpert Gallery, Gatlinburg, TN 2020 Earthbound, Stride Art Gallery, New York, NY Collective Expeditions II, International Society of Antiquaries Collective, BSB Gallery, Trenton, NJ 2019 Unchanging Window, Geoffrey A. Wolpert Gallery, Arrowmont School of Arts and Craft, Gatlinburg, TN (solo) Collective Expeditions I, International Society of Antiquaries Collective, SUNY Ulster, Stone Ridge, NY If Wishes Were Horses, Queen City 15 Gallery, Poughkeepsie, NY 2018 Up Close, Lazy Susan Gallery, New York, NY Time Travelers, Dorsky Museum, New Paltz, NY Labor & Materials, 21c Museum, Bentonville, AK 2017 Dusklittle, Orange County Arts Council, Newburgh, NY Green Space, Newburgh Open Studios, Newburgh, NY Dusklit, Seligmann Homestead, Sugarloaf, NY Dia, Matteawan Gallery, Beacon, NY 2016 Re-Union, B Minus Gallery, Santa Ana, CA Labor & Materials, 21c Museum, Oklahoma, OK 2015 Pop Stars, 21c Museum, Cincinnati OH Convocation, The Carnegie, Covington, KY On Labor, Pearlman Gallery, Cincinnati, OH (thesis) 2014 Foreign Bodies, Contemporary Art Center, Cincinnati OH Intermission, Chidlaw Gallery, Cincinnati, OH Honorable Mention, New York Studio Residency Program, Brooklyn, NY Residencies 2021-22 Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts, Gatlinburg, TN 2014 New York Studio Residency Program, Brooklyn, NY Grants, Award, & Fellowships 2024 Elizabeth Raphael Founder's Prize Award Finalist Tri-Star Current Art Fund Project Grant International Sculpture Center’s Outstanding Student Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture Award 2023 Orin B. and Erma G. Graff Scholarship, University of Tennessee Knoxville, School of Art Materials Grant International Sculpture Center’s Outstanding Student Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture Award Nominee Pocosin Art School of Fine Craft, Full Scholarship, Danielle Rose Byrd, Bowl Carving The Carter Center Live Auction Commissioned Sculpture, Atlanta, GA, (18’, 19’, 22’, 23’) Diane Solomon Kempler Scholarship, University of Tennessee Knoxville Dianne Komminsk Scholarship, Mid-South Sculpture Alliance 2022 National Basketry Organization, Panel Presenter, Unusual Suspects: Constructing Form + Concept Mid-South Sculpture Alliance, Scholarship Award Mid-South Sculpture Alliance, Confab, Panel Presenter College of Arts & Sciences Graduate Fellowship, University of Tennessee Knoxville First Year Fellowship, University of Tennessee Knoxville Summer Fellowship, University of Tennessee Knoxville 2018 Dianne Komminsk Scholarship, Mid-South Sculpture Alliance 2021 Arrowmont School of Arts & Craft, Full Scholarship, Alicia Deets, Waterfall Table 2020 New York Foundation for the Arts Emergency Relief Funds Publications 2025 Mergoat Magazine Vol.2 No.2 Split the Rail Issue Sculpture Magazine, January/February 2025 Issue 2024 Manifest Exhibition Annual, Retrospective Season 18 New South Finds, September Issue 2023 Phoenix Literary Arts Magazine, Spring Issue 2022 Basketry+, Summer Issue 2021 Divide Magazine, May/June Issue No. 3 2020 Under The Bridge, Installation - Autumn Issue Art Market Magazine, June Issue 48 2019 Friend of the Artist, Volume 9 2018 Chronogram, December Issue, Hudon Valley, NY Artrepreneur, Art Business Journal, November Issue, New York, NY Roll Magazine, TIME TRAVELERS, June Issue, Hudson Valley, NY |