K Daphnae Koop creates mixed media paintings on carved wood, often embellished with streams of shattered glass and objects found in nature.

Growing up in Minnesota, her grandmother taught her quilting and crochet, while her grandfather taught her building and remodeling, and the awareness that with time and effort, anything can be created by human hands.

Time spent wandering Minnesota’s country roads and woods instilled in her a deep love of the land and a connection to the earth. Minnesota’s lakes and rivers offered insight into the fluidity of water and the flow that embraces all things.

Koop studied art and literature, earning a BFA from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. Two decades in New York City followed, in a city that truly felt like home as she immersed herself the arts and culture that thrive there.

Koop has a particular love of Medieval art and objects of devotion and inspiration. These objects are an attempt to render the invisible visible, which is also the deep motivation behind all of her work. Her work combines objects and techniques not traditionally used together, and honors the beauty underlying the basest of materials.

Her eventual return to Minneapolis has manifested her current body of carved wood wall pieces - work that is pieced together almost quilt-like, and built and carved with her human hands, carrying on the legacy of the generations.

Koop’s work has been shown throughout the United States and is included in numerous private and public collections.

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

The inspiration for my work lies in the materials: recycled and rough-milled woods, shattered glass; the cast away and the broken. These things form the detritus of our world, and carry the dirt and scars of their history with them.

I piece together, and then carve my panels. The layers of paint that follow respond to the carved surface, or to the paint I have already laid down; amending each previous step as the piece slowly reveals itself.

I title my work with fragments of poetry; phrases that are an underlying part of our literary history and collective consciousness. These phrases suggest the themes, and add to the resonance created by the simple visuals of the piece.

My interest in used or abused materials is central to my work. It is an expression both of the life and beauty that exists in the ordinary, and of notions of reclamation and rebirth. The combination of carved texture, rich color, and sparkle of shattered glass acts as a visual reminder of the spirit and light that flows through each of us. My aim is to capture a glimmer of the beyond, and to transform the destruction and decay in my materials into beauty and triumph.