TERRA MADRE : Katrina Bello

exhibited at Zane Bennett Contemporary Art

artist KATRINA BELLO // ceramist KAMILLA BELLO

Air (Storytellers), 2025
Ink drawing on clay, basalt, and sand; ceramic tray

The rocks from the Taos Plateau volcanic field in Air are filled with holes from the air bubbles trapped when the lava solidified upon cooling. The sand is a mixture of tan-colored quartz-filled sand from Lake Michigan and black magnetite-rich sand not typically found in the lake but emerges after a storm. The subtitle, Storytellers, alludes to the basalt holes holding stories of their journey through geologic time-"what they witnessed during the passage from beneath the Earth's surface to the place where I found them." The clay cartouche bears a drawing of the night constellation she saw from the Taos Plateau.

Line (RA: 2h 31m 48.7s, Dec: +89° 15' 51"), 2025
Ink drawing on clay, 3-D print of a volcano, slate, and sand; ceramic tray

Bello connects the black sand from Lake Michigan to the beaches in Davao where she and her siblings spent nearly every weekend of their childhood. Discovering that the Rio Grande Rift as a north-trending continental rift zone, "it made me think of the North Star (Polaris) that has been used for navigation since antiquity." The cartouche bears a journal entry about her trip from Taos to the coast of Oregon where she spent a month of her residency looking across the Pacific Ocean
"to visualize the archipelago where I was born around 2,000 miles from the shore."
Line is subtitled with the astronomical coordinates for the North Star.

Color (7,400 miles), 2025
Ink drawing on clay, yellow ochre, and black sand; ceramic tray

Bello found the limonite rocks, commonly known as yellow ochre, in Colorado and Kansas during a trip from the east coast to Taos. The text and drawing on clay are about a rumination on the volcanic activities linking together her artist residency in Taos, the Oregon coast of a subsequent residency, and the Philippine archipelago of her birth. 7,400 miles is the approximate distance between the site where she found the limonite and her childhood hometown.

ceramic trays by KAMILLA BELLO