Now in its third year, the Creative Exchange Fund, administered by The Medium in downtown Springdale, supports local artists by providing financial support and a space to take creative risks. KUAF is partnering with The Medium to profile some of this year's 37 multidisciplinary artists. We'll hear about their art, their process, and what it means to be a creative in Northwest Arkansas right now.
Katy Kane's studio space at The Medium is full of her art — finished pieces and works in progress. She's an artist, designer and practitioner of therapeutic arts. Her work can include collage and take aim at patriarchy, or be vibrant images of tigers or cheetahs. She creates murals for homes and businesses and pet portraits, too.
Katy's current project, "Art with a Cause," combines painting, collage, origami and original interviews. Here, in her own words, more about her and her art — including the attraction of assembling collage.
"I get to see work from other people, so I get to look. I get to see those photos from around the world and my other passion. My grandmother just asked me what my other passion was, and I think my other passion is travel. So I get to see these other photos from National Geographic and some of these other political magazines. I really enjoy seeing a lot of these other photos. And then — maybe I call it shredding — I get to shred them up and just kind of get into all that and piece them together into a whole other form of art.
"I feel like I've always been an artist. I kind of just came out as an artist. I kind of just started drawing on the walls of the house, and my parents, they didn't really get on to me. They kind of encouraged me. And I made a mural when I was about 16. I've painted with acrylic paints, done some mixed media, and then got a little more into collage about three years ago.
"There is a story, especially with the project I have going on right now. I have my ladies, my interviews. But as you can see in the studio we're in right now, there are three other works that I did previously where I had an idea in mind that I tried to not get too far off focus. And I incorporate the origami — not all over the canvas, but I like to let the painting show through as well. A little bit of the painting comes through. It's not just about the beauty of the painting. It's about the beauty of these people. It's the women's stories coming to life.
"So I'm actually interviewing these women — these immigrant women in Northwest Arkansas who've experienced some sort of trauma around deportation. And then I'm creating these artworks based on the conversations we've had. So I get to talk with awesome women and then make art.
"One of the favorites in the whole series: 'Rising Against the Patriarchy.' Am I a feminist? Yes, definitely. But there's a lot of good men out there. Definitely. And we have these very defined gender roles in society, and we need to break out of them because it's hard on the men, too.
"Art gives us a way to easily digest. You may not know what you're looking at at the time. You may look at this art and think, oh, this is real pretty, and I'm just enjoying it. Oh, I'm gonna grab this and get this postcard. And then later you continue looking at it and you see a little bit more, and you're going to ask some questions, and it just continues to swirl in your mind a little bit more."
Katy Kane, speaking from her studio space at The Medium in downtown Springdale. More about her art, murals, pet portraits and her work in therapeutic art can be found at katylkane.art.
The Creative Exchange series is produced by KUAF Public Radio in partnership with The Medium. Support for this project comes from the Tyson Family Foundation. The Medium and the Creative Exchange Fund are projects of the Creative Arkansas Community Hub & Exchange, or CACHE. For more about this project and the 2025–2026 recipients, you can visit themedium.art.
Ozarks at Large transcripts are created on a rush deadline and edited for length and clarity. Copy editors utilize AI tools to review work. KUAF does not publish content created by AI. Please reach out to kuafinfo@uark.edu to report an issue. The audio version is the authoritative record of KUAF programming.
