Gallery North’s ‘Storytellers’ here through September

The walls of Gallery North were adorned with 3-D pieces of art Friday evening. In front of them, the guests stood speechless, many with dropped jaws. Behind them was the artist, with a grin on her face as she watched everyone attempt to search for a way to somehow describe her work. Catherine Burris struggles to find the words herself.

“I don’t even understand my work,” Burris said. “I have a lot of fun putting it all together.”

The 59-year-old breast cancer survivor describes herself as a contemporary narrative painter. She recalls earlier times in her life where familial influences led her to pursue a career in the arts.

“I remember my mother and my grandmother would take me antiquing all the time, and I would just find little things to piece together like a puzzle,” Burris said.

After graduating from Ball State University with a degree in art education, Burris moved to Florida to become a sign painter. She still travels to California to do hand lettering for restaurants, however, her work as a contemporary artist keeps her continuously dreaming up the next best thing. Some of her pieces have become permanent fixtures in the Indiana State Museum and the Kinsey Institute.

Burris’s show, “Storytellers: An Exhibit of Visual Narratives,” brought her back to Bloomington to be featured at Gallery North during September. Gallery North President Carolyn Rogers Richard couldn’t be more thrilled to have Burris’s art on display in the gallery, she said.
“When I first saw her art, I absolutely fell in love with it,” Richard said. “It is so emotional and evocative. We are very excited about the show.”

Guests filed through the doors of Gallery North and proceeded into the Red Room, or where the gallery hosts its guest artists’ pieces. It was not an uncommon sight to find guests standing and staring at Burris’s 3-D assemblages, as she calls them.
“A lot of my work, for some reason, you can really get into,” Burris said.

Her mixed media work gives her the opportunity to expand on personal experiences and intimate thoughts, she said. Each piece is unique and is never started with a clear view of how the finished product will be. Catherine Burris’s husband Bob knows this from firsthand experience.

“It’s fascinating watching her put these pieces together,” Bob Burris said. “She starts off going in one direction, and then they just evolve.”

While most of her art is built off of canvas or panel, her most intriguing pieces are fake human heads decorated with anything from nails and screws to maps and clock parts. One head, called Form 40, even has a set of false teeth.

“We call them visual narratives because everyone has their own idea of them,” Burris said.

Her work and the stories behind them have evolved over time as experiences in her life have left strong impacts. In the last 15 years, her work has become richer, more disturbing, and more thought provoking, she said.

“All I have to do now is get some crazy celebrity to buy one of my pieces, and it’ll be all over Hollywood,” Burris said with a laugh. “My stuff is different, and I know it, and I love it.”