Exhibitions

KATE KRETZ

Bio

Kate Kretz is an Associate Professor of Studio Art, as well as a professional artist, activist, author, speaker, mother, and Fulbright Specialist. She was recently diagnosed as 2E (gifted with autism) and actively advocates for neurodiverse artists and non-artists alike.

She grew up in upstate NY, the eldest of five children. Her father, a high school French & Latin teacher, took a sabbatical with his (then) family of six to live in France for a year when Kate was 9, where she attended French public school. At 18, Kate went back to Paris with $200 in her pocket. She drew plaster casts in an École Des Beaux Arts class and earned a Cours De La Civilization Française certificate at The Sorbonne while working as an au pair for a prominent French family. Returning to the states, she put herself through school, earning a BFA at Binghamton University (SUNY Foundation Award for Excellence in the Fine Arts, Harpur College Departmental Honors in Art, and Harpur College Academic Honors) while working 30/hrs a week as a picture framer. After a few years of being Art Director at an ad agency, she returned to academia. She was accepted at MICA’s Hoffberger School of Painting, but could not afford to attend, and ultimately earned an MFA from the University of Georgia, where she received both University-wide & Departmental Teaching Assistantships.

Artist Statement

I make art to keep myself sane. It is a way to process what is happening in the world around me, and I do it compulsively. My heart and nervous system resemble that of a folk artist, albeit one who has read way too many books.

I often experience news stories of inhumanity as a literal blow to my body, and carry the negative energy around with me until I process a way to exorcise it from my person, through transformative creation. I make the objects that need to exist in the world to represent some essential truth: it is undeniably clear what needs to be manifested through me at any given historical moment. While in-process, my work functions as a meditation, a healing prayer, a potent incantation to embed the finished object with as much power as possible. Often, the concentrated energy imbued in the object ultimately manifests as a scream, appropriately rivaling the impact of that original negative impetus that demanded its materialization. I aim for a beautiful, exquisitely-crafted gut punch.

I consider the inordinate amount of time invested in each piece as a gift given to the viewer, and stop only when there's not one more thing I could do to make it more powerful. In this day and age, it often feels as though the earnest, cathectic things I make are an act of profound resistance: I give birth to the tactile as I am swallowed by the virtual. I obsess over craft as our world becomes disposable. I wield emotion in its messiness because it’s uncool. I work until my hands shake, because the world does not care.

I am banging my head against the wall, but the stain is beautiful.