Meet Katherine Strobel

We were lucky to catch up with Katherine Strobel recently and have shared our conversation below.

Katherine , so happy to have you with us today. You are such a creative person, but have you ever head any sort of creativity block along the way? If so, can you talk to us about how you overcame or beat it?

I graduated this past year and following graduation after months and months of assignments and deadlines there’s this moment of nothing it was like when you shake a snow globe and there’s a brief second before the pieces start to move. I felt very overworked and lazy simultaneously and I continued getting caught in the idea of thinking good. I was working at a coffee shop looking at my painting degree and thinking about painting and yet painting wasn’t happening. I think that far too many creative folks get stuck thinking about thinking. It’s not a matter of beating the block but being able to find access back into creative practices. For me that was when I started making pen and ink drawings with a speedball pen that lives in my purse just trying to draw things that don’t matter or things that I find funny and getting back into sharing these observations more regularly. I will say the reconnecting doesn’t always have to be making work it can just be enjoying yourself, your community, even just taking the time to look at things that you enjoy without justifying why they should matter to other people. Choosing to work creatively is an exercise in accepting the things that you enjoy or enjoy making and gathering that energy into work. I find that investing in other elements of my life and interests make me restless and work becomes a byproduct of living.

Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?

I’m a local to the Akron area. My work has always had something to do with nostalgia or familiarity I think that there are objects that when eluded to just give a certain type of viewing pleasure like looking at the spacing of circles and realizing it’s meant to be a button or an amorphous blob that’s actually an egg or the texture of VCR tape film the idea that things can be more than one thing and it’s better if they are. I’m a watercolorist to my core, but currently I’ve been focusing more on drawing with a mid century modern sentiment. Lines with lots of energy and rhythm paired with flowing shapes. At times my work appears abstract, but I enjoy adding things that are similar to something, forms that can be half identified. Simultaneously, I have also been making short comic strips that chronicle slice of life experiences, sort of like a diary, but I let other people read them and laugh. I find it funny that my two ways of working are done in the same pen and yet so different. Currently I’m working on a graphic novel and I am hoping to have it available online and a limited run of physical copies following it’s completion, so that’s something to keep up with on my social media pages.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

I think that the ability to recognize skill over talent is important that you can’t look at what other people are doing and assume they started all the way up there when if someone is looking like they’re not trying or that it comes easy to them they’re probably running and working their hardest behind the scenes.

Being able to find your artistic forefathers will make your work improve much faster. there is always going to be an artist or artists that have already done what you’re thinking about. Synthesizing between these ancestors will make your work better.

Learn how to talk to people you have nothing in common with. This will make you think differently. It will not only make you not just better at being an artist, but it will also make you better at being a person. Having a community will always do you good.

Some of these skills are developed by working customer service or going to school, but they are lessons that need reminding so I’ll say that Comparison is the thief of joy that you just need to practice to be like the people you look up to. Creatively speaking you are not alone. your ideas have always been around you only need to find them in others to better communicate. And that it’s a good thing to be the kind of person that can reach for others and to look outside of yourself, so say hi to your neighbors.

Thanks so much for sharing all these insights with us today. Before we go, is there a book that’s played in important role in your development?

George Lois’s book Damn Good Advice for People with Talent is for lack of a better word my creative bible. He speaks on thinking creativity from the position of someone working in advertising, but almost every idea communicated relates intensely to any type of creative work. Each page of the book is a separate anecdote about his way of thinking and it’s a treasure trove of knowledge. I recommend it to anyone even thinking of working in a creative field. He has an idea that has stuck with me the concept that a good idea should be like toxic gas it should slowly unhinge your nervous system and knock you out. That it’s not just about the immediate way an idea is read but also how it’s processed over time. It’s a book that has meant a lot to me and made me better at thinking. As an artist that switches between languages it’s good to have a sort of common spoken language between works.

Contact Info:

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