Kate Roberts

Artist Statement

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.

-- Kate Roberts

Bio

Kate Roberts is native of Greenville, South Carolina. In 2015, she received her MFA from the School of Art and Design at the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University. She has traveled extensively and completed residencies and internships at art centers around the world, including Archie Bray Foundation for Ceramic Arts in Helena, MT, Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Colorado, La Meridiana in Italy, Le Cite International des Arts in Paris, Project Art in Massachusetts and Truro Center for the Arts at Castle Hill in Massachusetts. Her work has been exhibited at the Tampa Art Museum in Tampa, FL and Everson Museum in Syracuse, NY; major exhibitions include the 69th Scripps Ceramic Annual, the 2011 and 2015 NCECA Biennial, and Ceramic Top 40. She is currently a Lecturer of Ceramics at University of Wisconsin – Madison.