Formerly a student of mine as an eight, nine and ten year old, Krista is now a professional artist. As a graduate student at Chicago's Columbia College, she continues to study fine art through photography. As a result of her participation in an art show entitled "Involving Violence" in the "Butcher Shop" (a.k.a., yesteryear's meat packing district) of Chicago, her first review compares her to Andy Warhol in an article written by Jason Foumberg at http://www.newcitychicago.com/chicago/6942.html: "Several of the artists in "Involving Violence" remake and reconsider iconic media images of aggression and murder, from brutal lynching scenes to Eddie Adams’ blunt photograph of a Vietnamese prisoner shot in the head point blank. The lynching scenes from newspaper sources are rehashed courtesy of Krista Wortendyke. Her way of re-presenting violent imagery is to block out the tortured and bloodied victim with a pastel rectangle or stripe. This introduces a decorative element to the image, which is off-putting because it interrupts our expectations of the image ingrained in our memory. Wortendyke then traces a slight and careful outline of the victim’s twisted body. These lines serve to just barely remind us of the body hidden underneath, entombed in the image forever, and shielded from the violence that is re-enacted each time the picture is viewed or remembered. Wortendyke seems to be in conversation with Warhol’s legendary appropriations of violence; both make use of strong design elements in contrast to bleak scenes of murder, and where Warhol sought dissociation through repetition, Wortendyke’s distancing effects stoke our fascination with mourning." Congratulations Krista!!
