Katie Holten is an interdisciplinary visual artist and environmental activist committed to studying the inextricable relationships between humans and nature. Her work has been exhibited in museums and biennials internationally. She represented Ireland at the 50th Venice Biennale (2003). Feeling a crisis of representation as our species adapts to life in the Anthropocene, she created a Tree Alphabet and published the acclaimed book About Trees (Broken Dimanche Press, 2015).
While at MacDowell she developed her New York City Tree Alphabet into a baby board book (September 2019) and continued work on creating a sister volume to About Trees (2021). She also completed Stone Alphabet: A Field Guide to Manhattan for Emergence Magazine (May/June 2019). Additionally, she was interviewed by Hyperallergic, Fast Company, The New York Times, The New Yorker, Burning Worlds, Urban Omnibus, and the Natural Resources Defense Council about The New York City Tree Alphabet.
Holten has been awarded residencies at the Leitrim Sculpture Center in Ireland (June 2019); the Oak Spring Garden Foundation in Virginia (October 2019) and was recently artist in residence with the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation.
