Kyle Cottier
IT'S ONLY FOREVER, 2018kyle cottier
Kyle's interdisciplinary practice blends traditional textile and woodworking techniques spanning sculpture, drawing, and performance. They create work informed by the convergence of the natural and made world, exploring the synthesis of personal and social transformations. Currently, Kyle is currently living and working as an artist in Knoxville, TN and is a 2025 MFA candidate at the University of Tennessee Knoxville’s Graduate Sculpture program.
“Connection is essential to social and ecological interaction. One thing, depends on another thing, depends on another thing — so it goes. The world is abundant with sturdy patterns; constantly circulating between function, desire, growth, and decay. My labor-intensive studio practice is rooted in the metaphysical study of these shared structures and systems that exist where the natural and made worlds converge. Establishing dialogues that bridge destruction, creation, order, and entropy, my sculptural work exploits the tension between negative space and positive form to achieve a potent sense of ephemerality.
The exploration of the spiritual and convalescent functions inherent in organic material is a vital part of my process. Focusing on the underlying cyclical rhythms in nature — life, death, and regeneration — I am using discarded and found materials as fragmented units to assemble a unified whole. This process, through material repetition and traditional weaving techniques, simultaneously investigates our connection to each other as humans and to our environment.