About
Kaylan Buteyn’s work investigates physical representations of generational care through paintings, quilts, domestic textiles, abstraction and collage. She has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions at galleries that include Peep Space in Tarrytown, NY, Ground Floor Gallery in Nashville, TN, Janice Charach Gallery in Detroit, MI, Spilt Milk in Edinburgh, Scotland, among others. She has been the recipient of artist grants from the Indiana Arts Commission and Metro Arts Nashville and her work has been featured in publications including Milked Mag and Create Magazine.
In 2019, as a social extension of her art practice, Kaylan founded the Artist/Mother Podcast, sharing interviews of working artists who are mothers. Kaylan has spent the last 7 years facilitating community for artists in many forms including creating exhibition opportunities for artists worldwide, organizing a critique group program for hundreds of participants, facilitating virtual programming, in-person artist retreats and more. Kaylan is the founder of the Kinhouse Artist Residency and co-directs Kinhouse Gallery in Fort Wayne, IN. She holds a BA in Communications and a BA in Studio Art from Houghton College and an MFA from the New Hampshire Institute of Art. She lives with her partner and their 3 children in Fort Wayne, IN.
Artist Statement:
My work bridges painting, textiles, and social practice to explore ideas of lineage, care, and collective making. I work primarily with reclaimed quilts and fabrics—materials that carry the marks of time, labor, and love. These fragments, once part of domestic spaces and family histories, become the foundation for painted and sculptural forms that trace the invisible threads of generational legacy.
Much of my practice is a call back to my grandmothers and the women who came before me. Their acts of making, mending, and tending continue to guide my work. I inherited my great-grandmother’s quilt and fabric collection, and these pieces live on in my studio practice—stitched, painted, and reimagined into new forms. Each work becomes both homage and continuation, a conversation across generations about what we carry forward and what we let go.
Rooted in the material traditions of Appalachian quilting and shaped by the post-industrial landscape of the Rust Belt, my work honors the resilience embedded in everyday making. I see quilts as both record and relationship—objects that embody the work of women’s hands, community care, and the passing down of skill and story. By layering paint and textile, I invite a dialogue between past and present, gesture and stitch, personal memory and shared history.
Community building is central to my practice. Through collaborative projects, hosting artists in residence, and creating exhibitions, I create spaces where people can gather, make, and reflect together. These social exchanges—like quilts themselves—become acts of connection and restoration, threads that bind us across time and place.
