I am not an art critic nor an art “connoisseur,” I just know what appeals to me and what I can relate to. I’ve been a huge fan of Kayt Hester’s ever since I saw a show of hers at LITM almost a year ago. Kayt uses masking tape as her medium to create her art. I love her work so much, because I can understand and connect with it. When you look at her pieces from far it’s hard to see that they were all created using masking tape, but then you look up-close and you see all the intricate details… it’s truly remarkable. Kayt is one of a kind, a true talent and she lives right here in Jersey City.
Kayt is not just an artist she is also an animal lover and activist, at her shows she helps raise funds and awareness for “The Companion Animal Trust,” ” Hudson County Animal League,” and “Beth’s Kitten Coalition.” I recently did a birthday giveaway and after interviewing Kayt, she inspired me to donate the proceeds to the Liberty Humane Society (post coming soon).
What’s your name? Kayt Hester.
What do you do? I’m a masking artist and I also work at Fussy Friends Pet Supply.
What’s a “Masking Tape Artist?” Well, there’s a bunch of us out there actually, it’s just masking tape or any type of tape is our number one medium.
How did you get into it? I kind of just fell into it; it was an accident. You know, in high school I was always known for working in all sorts of different mediums and so I kind of stuck with that throughout the years. The tape came about, I just had a ton of it at one point and I needed to do something with it so I started messing around with it. Then Jelyenne from LITM, ten years ago, gave me a show so she put a couple pieces in a group show and they sold. After that I was like, “Oh! Okay, I can do this stuff and it’s gonna sell then maybe I can keep doing this,” and at the time I was married to another artist, and he was an amazing artist, and he was very impressed by the whole thing. I saw the points I earned with him at the time and I was like, “Okay, I’m going to keep doing this. Maybe it’ll help with things.” But you know, everything thing happens for a reason I guess.
I always give Jelyenne the credit from LITM because had she not put me in that group show I probably wouldn’t have ever sought out to keep doing this. I wanted to be a photographer, I went to school for photography.
Oh really? Yeah, I was a still life photographer for J. Crew and Scholastic Magazine for like eight years and I was miserable; I absolutely hated it.
Why did you hate it? Stress. I was on all types of anxiety meds. You know, everyone in the publishing industry is stressed out all the time and that was just not for me.
I can imagine. It was right after September 11th, I was just emotionally exhausted. So I was like, “I quit. I’m out of here. I never want to touch a camera again.” And I never went back and that’s that.
Are these all people that you’ve photographed? No, like this is Sigourney Weaver in Aliens, this is The Pixies, this is Calamity Jane, that’s Annie Oakley, those are like my Wild West Women. These are vintage scuba divers—I’ll get these images off the internet. The geisha girl is from like the 80s I guess, some geisha girl on her cellphone. This is my friend Joyce; I did photograph her, the rest of that was added by Norm Kirby, that was collaboration by me and Norm.
This piece in the middle was actually from my Pixies tribute show, this is supposed to be from one of their lyrics, “God is seven,” so this is was my like my representation of God. Sometimes I’ll collage a bunch of different things together; like this is from “Monkey Gone to Heaven” which is the same song as this one.
So it seems like you use different themes. What inspires them? Just kind of what I’m feeling at the time. I always have my shows in the summertime because I feel like people come out more in the summertime. Like you have a show in the dead of winter, you never know if you’re going to get an ice storm or whatever, so I always get inspired by summer. This is from my first solo show at LITM, The Formula of Summer, so that was all about summer and bikini girls and sunshine and the beach and stuff.
She’s hot, she has nice curves too. Yeah, yeah. I got her off of some rockabilly bikini website. And then this onion, I was just trying to do like more simple still-life type things.
What I love about your work it’s pieces that someone would want to buy. I try to roll that. That’s kind of like me. I feel like, at least I’ve been told I’m approachable and friendly and I think my work is approachable and friendly.
How is this show different than other shows you’ve had before? Well, it’s not like a huge solid theme. It’s kind of revisiting my old themes with new images and then also just doing whatever I want. I used to do scene from old movies a lot like To Kill a Mocking Bird, The Grapes of Wrath; so I’m doing Moby Dick this year as homage to that theme.
This writer got in touch with me and wanted me to illustrate this book he’s working on and I was super excited about it, but he’s mostly likely not going to use the images ‘cause they went in a different direction than what he thought originally. I’m using those images because I worked so hard on them and I need to get something out of them.
Those images will be in the show, I promised him I wouldn’t talk about them until his book came out. The exciting thing is that I did have to receive approval from the Salvador Dali Estate and they approved my work and said they liked my work so that was exciting. So when he told me that he was like, “Okay, now I need these images to be approved by the Salvador Dali Estate.” I was like, “Pfft, well there goes that, they’re going to be like ‘What the hell is this stuff?’” but they came back with, “We liked it.” So that was worth it all alone, I didn’t care if they used them at that point, I don’t care if I don’t ever get paid, it was like just to know that that was good enough.
Can you tell me more about the pieces in your show? Well this is going to be a portrait of Kathleen O’Malley and she is the president of the Hudson County Animal League and she taught me everything I need to know about “Trap, Neuter, Return” and taking care of feral cats. So this is like a little homage to her. We did a little photoshoot in the backyard with my cats. Well, the cats weren’t there; I superimposed in them because they’re afraid of everything.
So yeah, the show is also gonna to be a fundraiser for the Hudson County Animal League, and also Companion Animal Trust and The Fussy Friends Kitten Coalition. My friend Beth is constantly taking care of kittens. Everyone always needs money to help the cats so it’ll be a fun reason for that.
The funds from this one, a 100%, will go towards The Cat Ladies and a couple other cat themed pieces will go to The Cat Ladies also. Other than that, it’s the ten year anniversary show.
How long does a piece take you to do? It all depends. A week a time.
How come? Details.
How do you even do that? Just ripping to teeny-tiny pieces and trying to make them look as good as possible [and] stuff like that. Trying to nail it; just staring the image for a 1million years.
I love what it says here, “Work hard, a shitty job is waiting.” That’s my mantra. I don’t really want to be working at a pet supply store, but it’s necessary. People are always like, “You should buy this place! You should own your own pet supply store.” And I’m like, “Why?” That’s not my dream, that’s not what I want to do. I want to do artwork and get paid for it and be able to pay the bill with it. I’ve had a couple of good opportunities like that like Swiss Army flew me around the country a couple years ago to tape up their stores, so that was cool.
Here’s another piece from the Salvador Dali thing. This took forever and it was a little maddening, but you know, it’ll be at the show.
Are you going to sell it? I’m going to, yes, because I have bills to pay, I don’t have a choice and I sent my nephew to Europe this year.
So tell me about working at Fussy Friends and being involved all these nonprofits for animals. Well, I’ve always been a cat lady, you know, since I was a little kid. My father really loved cats; we only had one cat in the house but my father loved cats. So he I guess swayed me that way, lots of cat books, cat dolls and stuff like that.
I was born in Jersey City and came back to college in ’92 and then lived in Queens for a while and then came back to Jersey City in around 2002—there was a problem with the stray cats everywhere and you know, you just wanted to do what you could to help. You find the organizations and Companion Animal Trust and Hudson County Animal League were two of the best ones so they helped me to spay and neuter all the cats in my backyard and they do it all over Jersey City.
The cat population would be ten times worse if it were not for these groups and the ladies are really nice too, they’re great people, they’re fun to hang out with, their compassionate, their whole lives is this. Like they each have a house full of cats that they’re trying to get adopted out and they’re a lot more hardcore than me. So what I can do is I can raise money, I can raise awareness, ‘cause I’m not allowed to have a house full of cats, two is enough. I’ve got the bunch that live in the backyard and my neighbors aren’t very happy about that, but I do a lot of piece keeping, if they mess anything up, I will replace it, they all have my phone number. If a cat messes anything up, I will fix it.
I didn’t know you were born in Jersey City. Yes.
Where? What area? I was born in Jersey City in 1973.
How do you feel Jersey City has changed in the past couple of years? Well, it’s getting fancy, that’s for sure and you know a lot of us are getting priced out. Like if my landlord catches on to the trend of selling your house for a ton of money, I’m in trouble. I can barely afford to live in this apartment working at a pet supply and selling my artwork, I don’t know what I’d do with the cats in the back. Alex works two jobs, so we’re doing everything we can just to live in this apartment right now that we’ve been in for years. So if the rent goes up, I don’t know what I would do with the cats in the backyard. I work at Fussy Friends thirty hours a week; I’d probably have to go back to working a forty hour job.
Like the corporate world. Yeah, back to something like that and not having enough time for my art shows that would be terrible. It’s stressful, I worry about it constantly. Every time a friend of mine is pushed out of their apartment or I see it on Facebook like, “Oh, anyone know anything?” My stomach hurts a little. But other than that, like I’m all for new people and new businesses and everything, I love that but let’s leave us alone. Let us stay too, there’s gotta’ be room enough for everybody. So that definitely worries me, I don’t know what I would do with all my cats in the backyard ‘cause I doubt the new owner would want them back there.
And I worry about Fussy Friends too, our rent was already raised a ton this year and if it gets raised anymore I don’t know what we’re gonna do. So you know the whole Jersey City changing thing is definitely stressful upon us who are barely getting by as it is. And I can’t imagine how people who make less money than me or people who have a ton of kids or a few kids, how they can do it.
You know, I love Jersey City, I love all the people, I love all the different cultures; I feel like you get out of it what you put into it. If you’re a positive person who tries to help out your neighborhood and tries to improve things then it comes back to you in a good way.
Do you have a favorite Jersey City hangout spot? LITM of course and I love Ninth and Coles Tavern. Yeah, 9C and LITM are my two main spots, even though I just recently stopped drinking. I still go there and I have myself seltzer water…
What’s next for you? Well, right after this, I have a big installation at The Center of Visual Arts in Summit, New Jersey.
I love that you have a cat tattoo; did you get that in Jersey City? Oh thanks. No, I got this done a long, long, long time ago. I got it retouched in Jersey City by Miguel and Miguel did this one too from Body and Soul.
Anything else you’d like people to know about you or your work? I hope you like it and I hope you come to the show, August 4th at LITM.
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