Sober, proud transgender woman, farmer, artist
While at Princeton, Charlize Katzenbach worked with the Spanish abstract expressionist Esteban Vicente and potter Toshiko Takaezu and spent a semester at the New York Studio School. She also received a Master in Industrial Arts from the College of New Jersey.
“Many of my pieces contain a central focus,” Katzenbach says. “I use this to focus my own thoughts, as a form of meditation and also to draw the viewer into the piece. This is a practice used in meditation work, as in the yantras and mantras of the Hindu and Buddhist traditions.
“I have explored geometry in an abstract way since high school. I started layering a circular grid over a rectangular grid, expressing some of each in the finished work. This allowed the eye to move from grid to grid and created a tension and vibration between them.
“My recent work on glass has allowed me to work on various layers. This increases the geometric reality of the piece with the space between the shapes playing a distinctive part of the whole. The interplay between the layers, as well as the use of mirrors in some pieces, increases visual play as in the work with grids mentioned above. I often work with a limited palette, attempting to stay in a range of intensity which increases the strength of the color.”