A Woman's Work:

Not so much as a tradition but a relation...
Not so much as a commentary but a place of comparison.
One may find Karalla hovering above her canvases and papers laid out upon the floor, in process. Dropping and applying paint in a manner reminiscent of the action painting style of Jackson Pollock, her domestic process smoothes over the machismo style and context of Pollock's work. By the means of her steaming iron, Karalla directs and controls the paint in a manner quite oppositional to Pollock's penile, flowing technique.
Andy Warhol's Oxidation Paintings (produced by urinating upon oxide paint treated canvases) directly referenced Pollock's ejaculatory technique and commented on the myth of "Jack the Dripper" (Pollock's most infamous and insidious nickname) and the very male composition and content of the New York school of abstract expressionist painters. Yet, here in New York a half century later is abstract expressionist work in progress employing a definite feminist process. An interesting pairing of the role of the unconscious process touted by the "action painters" of the 1950's and the psychoanalytic basis for much of the feminist writing and theory of the 1970's and 80's.
Karalla's accessories and tools are based as much on the mixture of the domestic realm as on their practicality. A butterknife to portion the paint, a hair dryer for spot drying. While the completed canvases are hung outside to dry on the clothesline, their colorful surfaces contrast with the neighbors clean laundry.
Not that Karalla's primary strategy is a feminist critique of Pollock's work, it is located more in her own process and identity than in specific outcomes, finished products, or postmodern revisionism. The feminist process of this particular style only brings another layer to the reading of her work, which often deals with memory, figurative representations and literature.

By Carson McKee, 1998

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