Kat Eye Studio

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Begin with a Background (Mobile Tutorial + Stackables Formula)

I’m already learning from my #30edits Abstract Challenge! Just what I was hoping would happen. And that, of course, means I have new things to share.

One of my early observations: The first step in any abstract edit is removing the connection to reality in the image.

Abstract Kat Sloma iPhone Photography

Turns out, that is harder to do than I realized! Our brains seem to want to make meaning out of the slightest texture and pattern, so removing that connection to reality requires some work. One way to do this is through blur of the image, which softens the lines and textures which provide a lot of information to our brain.

Today I’m sharing my favorite method for creating background blur using the Stackables app, using an image I shared last week in another post. I think this forest fern image was leading me toward my abstract project.

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I started with this forest image, which caught me eye due to the interesting repetition in the ferns and fir needles.

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In Stackables, you can add a blur layer by going to the Adjustments menu (top bar) and selecting the Blur effect (right menu). You can increase the blur by selecting Intensity (lower left), and then increasing the slider (bottom bar). Layer 6 in this iPad screen shot is the blur layer in the Stackables formula I’m sharing with you today.

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If you want to increase blur more than possible with a single layer, no problem. Just duplicate the layer. You can keep adding Blur layers to reach the desired effect. Increasing blur increases abstraction, by taking away the edges and textures of the object you photographed.

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The final image (here again) was created by blending the blurred background with some other fern images. It is not a full abstract, but you might be able to see how the original image comes through as a background layer.

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Now I have the Stackables Formula for you! This formula, called Bluish Blur, was used to create the fern background above. It shows you how you can use blur along with other Stackables layers to begin changing an image toward abstract. Have fun abstracting!

To download the “Bluish Blur” formula for your own use in the Stackables app, do the following:
1. Make sure the Stackables app is installed on your iOS device.
2. On your iOS device, download the formula file from this link. (This is a Dropbox link, and you may be prompted to save the file to your Dropbox account, if you have one. Go ahead and save it to your Dropbox and then download from there.)
3. When you go to download or open the file on your device, use “Open in…” and choose the “Open in Stackables” option.
4. Stackables will open and ask if you want to import the formula, tap “Import.”
5. To use the formula, load a photo, go to Formulas (1), choose Favorite Formulas (2). You will see the imported formula (3), so tap to preview. Click the wrench icon (4) to apply the formula and make changes to the layers.

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Join me in a new #30edits

I’ve been in a creative lull lately, so it’s time to kick it up a notch. I’m starting a new #30edits project, and you are welcome to join me! 

This time, instead of creating 30 pieces from the same starting photograph, I’m going to create 30 abstract pieces, starting from different photographs. The thread tying them together is the abstraction. It will be an exploration of line, color, and shape separate from reality.



I’ve danced at the edge of abstract for several years now, but I’ve always maintained the tie back to some recognizable element of the photograph I used to start the process. The goal in this project is to eliminated that tie. Push into new territory.

How far can I go? What will result? Watch here and Instagram to see. 

If you’d like to join me in your own #30edits project, I welcome you. Pick your parameters–whether it’s 30 edits from the same image like I did last time, 30 abstract edits like I’m doing this time, or something different–it all achieves the same result: Getting you outside your comfort zone. There is no timeline requirement (such as 30 edits in 30 days). Go with your gut. Do what works for you.

Use hashtag #30edits on Instagram to participate. I’ll see you there.

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The Speed of Time

Most of the time, we move through our days with an idea they are never-ending. They stretch out into a routine of day after day, week after week, punctuated here and there with a few big events. That illusion has been shattered for me with one big milestone this year: High school. 

It’s as if, all of a sudden, I am truly internalizing that my son is growing up. Growing toward gone. When the last four years of childhood started to get chunked up into grade levels… Freshman, Sophomore, Junior, Senior… I woke up to how little time we have left with him here at home. How fast it all has gone.

In the blink of an eye, from seedling to full grown tree.



I was talking to friend at work with a young daughter, having the typical “it goes so fast” conversation. But I told him parents with older kids don’t say this to give advice so much as they are in shock. We can’t believe it ourself. We are dazed and surprised that this seemingly endless phase of life is nearing an end, ending, ended. We utter the words in the hopes we can make sense of it, for ourselves.

My son is finishing up his freshman year in high school right now. With this year, we started talking seriously about college. Prep courses and requirements and grades and activities. What he might want to study. Where he might want to go.

And in the back of my mind, this dawning realization that there is so little time left.

In the last few months, I’ve started to shift my thinking and priorities around the idea that he has about three years left at home. What do I want that time to look like? 

It’s an interesting shift. I’ll own it…. Up to now I haven’t been the most “involved” Mom. I’m there, I’m supportive, but my kid has never been the center of my identity or my world. I have a career (two!) that matters to me and a partner to share the load.

But now, maybe more than ever, I find myself turning toward my son. Realizing career can wait, art can wait. I want to be there, on the front lines, seeing him transform into an adult. I want to be available, when he wants it, to listen or advise. To nudge him in he right direction. 

Control has ended, influence is all I’ve got left. And three more years of time.

It goes so fast. 

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Leaving Italy Behind

Every relationship, every experience, every phase of life shapes us. The sum total makes up who we are, becomes part of our story. 

Some experiences are more significant than others, of course. Some have a “before” and an “after” you can pinpoint as a moment of transformation. Some are more gradual, affecting a subtle change you don’t notice until weeks, months, years later. 

Living in Italy was a before/after time for me, for sure. After I returned, everything referenced back to it. I had changed dramatically and emerged shiny and new. It was not just the travel and experience of living and working in another country, but becoming an artist too. Rediscovering and reconnecting with that essential part of myself.

Classic Italian Transport, Parma, Italy

The time and experiences since moving back home to Oregon have brought more subtle transformation. It’s not the same type of before/after. Italy was like a flash flood, radically altering the scenery. The last five years in Oregon have been a gradual reshaping, like a river over time alters the landscape. Bit by bit I continue to learn, grow and transform… And hardly notice it.

Until recently, that is. Recently there have been a few signs I’m leaving my Italy experience behind… 

I’ve sold my scooter. It was a great idea and I’m glad I learned how to ride it, but it turns out I like to bicycle better. I still love a good scooter sighting, but they are few and far between.  

I’m rewriting my artist statement. It references the change in my art, moving from Milan, Italy to Corvallis, Oregon. For urban scenes to forest elements. But that was five years ago now, and the change isn’t happening anymore–it’s happened. I need to talk about what’s relevant to my work now.

I took my eCourses down off of my site. A Sense of Place and the Find Your Eye series were all very timely, coming from my photographic experience and artistic growth while living in Italy, but it has become hard to promote them when the art they teach isn’t even close to what I create now. 

And with these small steps and signs I realize that my experience in Italy has been folded in to the mix. It’s been integrated into what makes me Kat. It’s no longer this huge thing, so momentous that everything has to reference back to it. It’s part of the greater whole.

That’s a good thing. It’s not that I have forgotten my Italy experience or I don’t want have the big before/after moments in the future, it’s that I want to continue to learn and grow all the time. I want to continue to transform while living in my little town, in my regular, everyday life. And I can. 

I know I can, because here I am, five years post-Italy, creating and teaching a different type of art and living a life based on choices which are right for me today. Still an artist — thank you time in Italy, for showing me that — but an evolving one. 

So maybe that’s my final Lesson from Abroad: We keep changing and growing, no matter where we are. If you had told me five years ago where I would be today, I wouldn’t have believed you. 

Where will I be five years from now? Who knows. I certainly don’t. 

All I do know is that I will be different. My art will be different. My life will be different. It will be interesting to see how everything turns out. 

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The Role of the Artist

Did you know, by 2025 five billion people will live in cities? And by 2050, two-thirds of the earths population will call the urban environment home? I’ve been reading about mega trends for work, and rapid urbanization is a major trend. More and more people are moving to live in cities, some of which are growing to an astonishing size. Ten million, anyone? From my little town of fifty thousand, it’s hard to fathom.


And I realized, on a hike one morning, how little nature the people in those environments will see. Will they get to feel the cool canopy of the forest? Will they ever experience walking with dirt under their feet, in a place where all they can see is nature? Maybe not. Even with great planning and fantastic green spaces in cities, it’s not the same as being in a forest where all you hear is the sound of the birds and the wind in the trees. Where you don’t see another person on the trail.

It made me sad for that future, for those people, who may never know the natural world the way I’ve been able to know it.

But then… I realized it means I, and other artists, have a super important job. 

As an artist who spends time in the natural world and who captures and interprets these places in my art, I can bring the forest to others who can’t experience it. I can seek to evoke the feeling of those moments, the quiet I feel in my soul, through the art I create.

Isn’t that the role of the artist, to see and interpret the world we live in? To help others see what’s around them in a new light? To show them something they haven’t seen before, real or imagined?

This role of artists is going to become more and more important, especially as more and more people cannot experience the natural world in an immersive way. Technology might be able to someday give a proxy experience to the senses through virtual reality, but it’s artists who will explore and convey how it feels–on the inside, to the heart. 

That’s always been our role as artists, hasn’t it? Let’s embrace it. We have an important responsibility to the current and future citizens of earth, who won’t know or experience the natural world any other way.

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Marking Time to Summer

Crashing down the hill, arms akimbo, I am sliding headlong toward long days and warm nights. I couldn’t stop the momentum if I wanted to. I am going to land in a heap, limbs twisted and gasping for air, on top of summer at the bottom of this hill. Ready or not, here I come.


Next week is the last week of the leadership program for work, wrapping the program up and freeing up more time and brain space. One final trip to Stanford. Six months gone, in a blur of work and phone calls and winter weather. Relief to be done yet sad to leave the world of higher education, where I could play at being a student again. It has been fun. I’m reminded I’m good at being a student. Too bad it doesn’t pay a living wage.

Closer to home, Brandon is nearing the end of school and final activities are piling up. After the finish line, even more activities impatiently await. Trip to Ireland with his choir, trip to Colorado to visit relatives. Best time of year in Oregon–summer is–and he will happily miss half of it. It’s a shame at the same time it’s fantastic. So many options, so little time.

Summer is coming, ready or not. 

We try to measure time, parse it out into usable packets of minutes and hours and days and weeks. We look ahead and think, “After this, after that…” Why do we hurry it along so? We are rushing toward the future at the same rate as time creeps along. Always the same. We can’t change the physics of it. 

What can I do to slow it down, speed it up? Because I want to do both, right now. I want to quickly move through some parts to spend longer in others. 

I want long summer days with my windows open, the sounds of lawn mowers and wind chimes drifting through. I want to wander the house with bare feet and painted toes. I want dry hiking trails and burrs in my dogs fur. I want my teenager to sleep until noon and laze about the house, getting bored and saying there is nothing to do. I want to put projects off because it’s just too nice outside to do otherwise.

Come on summer, I’m ready.