* All images used with permission. Please do not distribute without first contacting the artist.
Kate Roberts is native of Greenville, SC now living in Memphis, TN. She received both her MFA and BFA from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University in 2015 and 2010 respectively. She has completed Residencies around the world including Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts in Montana, Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Colorado, and the Cite International des Arts in Paris.
Kate describes her work by saying, “My practice is a meditation on time and its role in the decay of objects and memories. Inspiration is drawn from historical objects, the architecture around me, or a personal relationship. My processes are repetitive and labor intensive; I draw, construct, and weave using materials to depict fleeting, fragile moments and to examine the temporary physicality of an object or idea. The physical properties of my materials – parched, cracked clay and vitreous porcelain – at once delicate and dense emulate states of decay in nature yet are built and mended by hand. This contradiction, of meticulously crafting the ravages of time, is at the foundation of my work. Accumulation and deterioration; solidity and transparency; entrapment and protection; order and chaos are material and organizational polarities that cause the work to teeter on the edge of viability in a perpetual state of in-between. This push and pull, back and forth, parallels our relationship with the natural world. Nature bares life, nature takes life away, humanity resists, but nature in the end has the final say. And without question the cycle begins again. In questioning the consequences, I create work to find the beauty and the unrest in this temporal state. “
Her work has been exhibited in museums such as the Tampa Art Museum, Frick Museum in Pittsburgh, PA and Everson Museum in Syracuse, NY
She has lectured at the University of Washington in Seattle, WA and University of Wisconsin in Madison, WI.
