Katy Rodden Walker: Community-Focused Artist
Artist Katy Rodden Walker interacting with her installation. Image courtesy of the artist and The New Bedford Whaling Museum.
At the New Bedford Whaling Museum, the gentle hum of electric motors can be heard from several rooms away. In a special exhibition gallery, artist Katy Rodden Walker has installed hundreds of jellyfish created out of recycled plastic waste and crafted by the hands of many community members. Attached to moving arms on the ceiling, the collection moves up and down, simulating a wave-like dance. Projected images make it an immersive experience. Titled Community BLOOMS, the show illustrates Rodden Walker’s interdisciplinary and community-oriented approach to art making. The effect is inspiring.
A graduate of Bates College in Maine, Rodden Walker worked in tech before completing an MFA in Ceramics at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth in 2022. While she was in grad school, she was also pregnant, a fact that shifted the way she created art and led her to the work she is currently making. She was looking for a medium that was a lighter lift but that still allowed her to probe issues of concern to her and the wider world. Refuse that littered the shore and sea became her method to illustrate the blight which microplastics are on a broad spectrum of ecosystems.
Her resulting Community BLOOMS project, which has been ongoing for several years, is not only about science and environmentalism, but also about gathering neighbors with a common goal to create.
Reflecting on the role this kind of involvement has in her practice as an artist, Walker says, “I enjoy sharing my practice and watching folks respond to what they learned and turn it into something that is uniquely their own creation. Creating a shared experience through artmaking is both active and impactful. Whether it be through the process of cleaning beaches, crafting a plastic jellyfish sculpture, or watching individual contributions to a project culminate into an immersive exhibit, it activates the audience and showcases the importance of collective creativity. I see community involvement as deeply human and transformational because it creates a space to be part of something greater than ourselves, and to connect with people at a fundamental level, which feels impactful.”
Artist, educator, and community organizer Katy Rodden Walker engages with students. Image courtesy of the artist and The New Bedford Whaling Museum.
In addition to being a practicing artist, Rodden Walker is also an educator and is currently teaching at Providence College in Rhode Island and Regis College in Massachusetts. She has engaged her students in conversations around her work, and enlisted them to assist in its making. Rodden Walker’s completed installation is both expansive and intimate. It occupies an entire gallery at the New Bedford Whaling Museum, filling the room with material, light, sound, and action. At the same time it beckons viewers to engage deeply with the message behind it, that of a more thoughtful interaction with the natural world and with one another.
Asked about her experience of showing at the museum, Walker answers, “I cannot say enough great things about the New Bedford Whaling Museum, and the team of people who work there. Naomi Slipp, (Chief Curator), believed in Community BLOOMS from the beginning, and her team was very supportive of the work I was doing, helping me connect with folks in New Bedford. I worked very closely with Ymelda Laxton, (Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art & Community Projects), when she was hired in 2023, and she was integral to ensuring that my artistic vision came to life and helped me install over 300 jellyfish between the Center Street Gallery immersive exhibit and the front Mezzanine window. I am deeply grateful for the continuous support everyone at NBWM provided during the project and am very happy with the way the exhibit turned out and the response it has received thus far.”
A detail from Katy Rodden Walker’s Community BLOOMS installation, on view through April 27, 2025. Image courtesy of the artist and The New Bedford Whaling Museum.
Over its six month run, Rodden Walker’s exhibition has touched a big audience. The Whaling Museum draws in scores of students and families from a multitude of backgrounds, making her installation an opportune moment for teaching and conversation. This show, the artist’s first museum solo, is the jumping off point for more exciting work in the same vein.
Looking forward, Rodden Walker plans to continue exploring themes around ecology in her forthcoming projects. Describing her plans, the artist says, “Making the invisible more visible is a theme I continue to explore in my practice. Since plastics are everywhere and in everything, and the problem continues to grow, I am committed to continuing what Community BLOOMS started, and I hope the exhibit will travel soon.”
She continues “I am also in the first phase of a two-year eco-social art project called Vestibules (working title), with Anna Dempsey, Professor, Curator, and Art Historian at UMass Dartmouth. Vestibules will be a community wetland restoration area, with site-specific eco-art installations that play with the notion that our balance/perception is critically affected by our entanglement with the non-human world. I’m looking forward to creating a living installation, researching native plants, and making time and space within the Southcoast community to reflect on climate resilience, environmental justice, and rekindling connections between humans and nature.”
Another view of Community BLOOMS, Katy Rodden Walker’s immersive and ever-changing installation. Image courtesy of the artist and The New Bedford Whaling Museum.
Katy Rodden Walker’s show at the New Bedford Whaling Museum is a thought-provoking event that also encapsulates this maker’s larger artistic project. Community BLOOMS is the summation of a people-centered endeavor to create and the artist behind it deserves praise for bringing to light important issues in a considered, engaged, and inventive way.
Community BLOOMS, Katy Rodden Walker’s immersive exhibition, is on view at the New Bedford Whaling Museum through April 27, 2025. Learn more and plan your visit at www.whalingmuseum.org. Learn more about Katy Rodden Walker at www.katyroddenwalker.com or follow her on Instagram at @katyroddenwalker.
