NEW YORK, NY.- Laurel Gitlen congratulates to Kate Newby on her first permanent public commission, The Sound of Trees, now on view in the Arrivals Terminal of the Portland International Airport (PDX).

The Sound of Trees is comprised of more than 1,600 handbuilt ceramic tiles and spans 75 feet. From a distance the work is an exhilarating abstract field of continuous colors and textures, while up close the richly textured surface holds the topographic impressions of pine needles, leaves, and puddled glass melted into the crags and depressions in the clay.

Over several years, Newby developed this work collecting natural and found materials with students, artists and community members in Oregon and then used these elements in the making, glazing and firing of the tiles in her Texas studio. The complex surface relays the marks and imprints of the Oregon landscape and Newby's hands and body as she worked directly on the clay.

Shaped through pressing, reworking, and at times walking across raw clay, each tile records traces of touch, pressure, and movement and maps a continuous interaction between humans and nature.





The six-minute documentary The Sound of Trees follows the development of Kate Newby's permanent public artwork for Portland International Airport (PDX). Filmed throughout the making of the commission, it traces the project from collecting materials and working with clay through fabrication, firing, and installation, offering a behind-the-scenes look at the craft and collaboration required to realize a permanent artwork of this scale.

Kate Newby (b. 1979, Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand, lives and works in San Antonio, Texas) creates works that are site-responsive and interrogate the physical and conceptual limits of sculpture with works that interact directly with nature, the viewer, and conditions like weather. Working primarily with earth elements, concrete, textiles, glass, and ceramics, her work elucidates the physical and poetic qualities of materials. Working at all scales, her practice has a performative ethos both in the making and the presentation of her work.

Kate Newby received her Doctorate of Fine Art in 2015 from the School of Fine Arts at the University of Auckland. Current institutional exhibitions include the Brandhorst Museum, Munich and Museum Folkwang, Essen. Recent institutional exhibitions include the Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Museum of New Zealand, Adam Art Gallery Te Pataka Toi, Wellington; Mori Art Museum, Tokyo; The Institut d'Art Contemporain, Villeurbanne; Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna; 21st Biennale of Sydney; Sculpture Center, New York; Blaffer Art Museum, Houston, Sharjah Biennial, UAE. In 2012, she won the Walters Prize, New Zealand's largest contemporary art prize, and in 2019 Newby was awarded a Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Grant. Kate has been awarded residencies at The Chinati Foundation, Artpace, Fogo Island, and the International Studio & Curatorial Program ISCP.