Katie Shanks (they/them) is a transdisciplinary visual artist working across the fields of sculpture, print, installation and performance. Growing up in the high deserts of Southern California, they spent their formative years exploring and learning from the rich and varied landscapes and bustling urban centers of their home state. These experiences instilled a deep respect for the interdependent relationships between beings (human and beyond) and delicate natural systems, while kindling a distrust of the interruptive and often destructive structures imposed societally. This cultivated appreciation and suspicion are foundational to both their location based and embodiment work. Shanks utilizes weaving, stitching, quilting, and other labor-intensive fiber techniques as modalities to interrogate assumed frameworks, deconstruct binary thinking, and nurture new pliable relationships between their varied subject matter and content. Working from a queer ecological perspective through phenomenology and autotheory, they explore ideas of home, growth, transformation, and the construction of self.