All works on this site are
copyright © Kate Kretz.
All laws of intellectual property apply and will be enforced.
RECENT/UPCOMING EXHIBITIONS
"Lustrous Lines" Metalpoint Exhibition
Curated by Jeff Lewis & Jeannine Cook
Traveling, dates & venues TBA
Hair Apparent
Curated by Twig Murray
The Athenaeum, Alexandria, VA
May 30 - July 14, 2013
Booth Project: Gaston Ulgalde & Kate Kretz
with Hardcore Art Contemporary Space
LINK Artfair - Hong Kong
May 23 - 26, 2013
Milestones: Textiles of Transition
Curated by Deborah Corsini
San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles, San Jose, CA
May 8 - July 21, 2013
Fiberart International 2013
(traveling)
Society for Contemporary Craft, Pittsbugh, PA
April 19 - August 18th, 2013
San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles, San Jose, CA
November 6, 2013 - January 19, 2014
Franklin G. Burroughs - Simeon B. Chapin Art Museum, Myrtle Beach, SC
January 19 - April 24, 2014
"Postpartum"
Curated by Rachel Epp Buller
E.B. White Gallery, Butler College, El Dorado, KS
March 1 - April 5, 2013
"Adornment", Selections from the Belger Foundation
Curated by Evelyn Craft
Belger Arts Center
Kansas City, MO
Feb 1 - June 8, 2013
"From Lausanne to Beijing" International Biennial Fiber Exhibition
Academy of Arts & Design, Tsinghua University
Beijing, China
Nov 8- Dec 15, 2012
Questions of Identity: Who What, Why We Are
Curated by Claudia Rousseau
Blackrock Center for The Arts, Germantown, MD
Nov 28- Dec 21, 2012
Scope Art Fair
with Hardcore Art Contemporary Spac, Booth F03
Miami, FL
Dec 4 - 9, 2013
Berliner/Liste Contemporary Art Fair
with Hardcore Art Contemporary Space, Booth G 1.51
Berlin, Germany
Sept 13 - 16, 2012
Campaign Re/Form: Artists Reimagine the Election Process
Curated by Holly Bass
Greater Reston Arts Center, Reston, VA
Sept 13- Oct 27, 2012
Eudora Welty Symposium Four-Person Exhibition
Curated by Dr. Beverly Joyce & Alex Stelioes-Wilis
Mississippi University for Women, Columbus, MS
Oct 11 - 31 , 2012
"This and That: Unconventional Selections From The Permanent Collection"
Curated by Klaudio Rodriguez
Frost Art Museum, Miami, FL
July 18 - Oct 21, 2012
Solo Exhibition: "This Sharp World"
Hardcore Art Contemporary Space, Miami, FL
April 14 - July 7, 2012 (extended)
Virtual walk-through of the exhibition
SELECTED CRITICAL REVIEWS
"With a bluntly primal wit, Kretz claws at the guts......"
- Carlos Suarez De Jesus, MIAMI NEW TIMES
“Kate Kretz creates a poetic space in which tenderness and fear can confront one another. It is an absolute dedication to the threat of uncertainty through handiwork, and achieves the consistency of an art that protects life itself."
- Adriana Herrera, EL NUEVO HERALD
Kate Kretz embroiders pillowcases with eyelashes and human hair... the result is both delicate and creepy... ”
- Karen Rosenberg, NEW YORK TIMES
“Few acts of sexual and romantic love are as oppressive and shocking as Kretz's triumphantly perverse sewn tributes to maternal overinvestment. ”
- Felicia Feaster, ArtscriticATL.com
"The paintings of Kate Kretz.... have the power to stop people in their tracks."
- Candice Russell, CITYLINK
“A reverence, a quiet bubble of awe, is experienced upon viewing her work."
- Tamsen Ellen, HAIR IS FOR PULLING
“Kate Kretz's needle art is amazing. And I mean that literally. When I look at her work, my mouth falls open and I go into a kind of trance, enthralled by her concepts and captivated by her exquisite technique." - Denise Felton, CRAFTGOSSIP.COM
Kate Kretz’s paintings are explorations of identity in various states of extremity, symbolized by the often dramatic or downright lurid effects of light (These effects, incidentally, are what distinguish Kretz as an exceptionally promising younger artist.)”
- Jerry Cullum, ART PAPERS
“Lush and luminous, paintings by Kate Kretz speak of dreamy nighttime worlds alive with possibilities and portents. “Beauty Wrest” is her show of painstakingly, immaculately crafted oil paintings....”
- Elisa Turner, MIAMI HERALD
“Powerfully resonant and enticingly complex, Kretz’s paintings are crafted - one might almost say wrought - with an exquisite detail that draws the viewer in, unfolding before the viewer’s gaze, and only with an investment of time and effort....”
- Nora Heimann, PhD, Catholic University, Beauty Wrest catalog
“Kate Kretz... known for labor-intensive art of intellectual heft.”
- Candice Russell, CITY LINK
"Kretz’s work is decidedly literary... everything plays against other elements and viewer expectation and experience to create stories capable of penetrating the television-addled consciousness of contemporary viewers.”
- Neil Herring, ART PAPERS
"It's unusual in this TV/Internet/YouTube age for a painting to captivate the nation, but that's exactly what Kate Kretz did with her piece, 'Blessed Art Thou'... "
- Adam Bernard, FOAM Magazine
“With the skill of a Caravaggio and the mindset of a Gloria Steinem, Kate Kretz paints disturbing images of the emotional life of women.....”
- Verna Safran, thl.yourvillage.com
“Edgy, seductive, work of a most unusual artist.....miraculous beauty.... How typically clever of the artist to take a conventional genre and turn it upside down. But then there is cleverness throughout this welcome exhibition.”
- Candice Russell, CITY LINK
"Kre(n)tz traffics in the unspoken and unacknowledged, even the private thoughts that can be our own undoing..."
- Cate McQuaid, THE BOSTON GLOBE
“The erie glow that emanates from so many of the canvases...is a result of being raised ‘on a regimen of Catholicism and Technicolor movies.’ It’s an odd but apt convergence of influences, with the conflicting impulses of the Vatican and Hollywood coming together to create the emotional turbulence and instability that always seem to lurk just below the deceptively calm surfaces of Kretz’s images.”
- Michael Mills, NEW TIMES MIAMI
“Tableaux as portentous as ones assembled by David Lynch; details of light and shadow combined with dramatic elements of color and composition...”
- Jerry Cullum, ART PAPERS
"Kate Kretz...wowing viewers in a variety of media, from oil on canvas to sculpted bas-relief encaustic to embroidery. Her obsessive, detail-oriented images pull us into their magnetic orbit."
- "Best Bets", NEWS & OBSERVER
"Kate Kretz's paintings are amazing. Realistic and phantasmagoric, she details every inch of the canvas with ardent descriptions of past and present. Her palette is spectoral and the images she paints in both oils and acrylics show her mastery of the craft."
- Margurite Gil, MIAMI SUNPOST
"Kate Kretz's solo exhibition was another display of her impressive work... her work in two & three dimensions is highly taut with emotion that is complex and sensitive."
- Onajide Shabaka, MIAMI ART EXCHANGE
"These astonishing "pillow drawings" are as affecting for their execution as for the way they unblatently describe a psychological maelstrom."
- Elisa Turner, MIAMI HERALD
Complete reviews and downloadable catalogs are on the Reviews page.
NEWS
The most recent work produced can alwaysbe viewed here, on Flickr.
A new, comprehensive book of Kate's fiber work is available in hardcover, softcover, and e-book form at: http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/invited/3428016/fbc6e8b61b9c1b797345225e8de46e1e5f37f1e9
Kate's paper and powerpoint presentation, "The Last Art Taboo: Identity Politics of Motherhood" was delivered at The National Textile Society's Symposium in Washington, DC, on September 20th, 2012. The powerpoint is now available for viewing on Youtube.
This Sharp World...," a solo exhibition at Hardcore Art Contemporary Space, up through July 7, 2012, was reviewed in El Nuevo Herald, and has been featured in The Huffington Post, CraftGossip, Hoopla: The Art of Unexpected Embroidery, Craftzine, Quigley's Cabinet, and Berthi's Textile Collection Blog in the Netherlands. The show was an Editor's Pick on Flavorpill, and was Art Circuit's Critic's Choice-Best Picks of Summer 2012. A virtual walk-through of the exhibition can be found on Flickr.
Kate's work was featured in the Dec 1st, 2011 issue of "1626", a Chinese street fashion magazine.
Kate's work was included in the documentary, "The Second Tear: Kitsch" for NDR/arte German Public Television, directed by Tink Diaz of Tag/Traum Filmproduktion.
Kate's hair embroideries will be featured in a new foundations textbook, "Foundations, The Fundamentals of Art and Design", to be published by Pearson Prentice Hall Press in Spring of 2013.
Kate's painting, "Blessed Art Thou", was exhibited at the Art Miami Fair, January 5-8, 2007. The painting was covered by over 130 news sources, including ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, Fox, The International Herald Tribune, and the New York Times. Complete list of press coverage for the painting is here.
Detailed images of Blessed Art Thou.
Reviews, catalogs, and interviews are available for downloading on the Reviews page.
"Grace & Shame" catalogs may be purchased from Amazon here.
Kate is currently working in her studio full-time in the Washington, DC, area, giving lectures & critiques as a visiting artist at various universities.
STATEMENT
One of the functions of art is to strip us bare, reminding us of the fragility common to every human being across continents and centuries. Often, I will meet someone, and the visible weight of his or her life becomes almost unbearable to me, it rips me open. The objects that I make are an attempt to articulate this feeling.
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.
BIO
Kate Kretz grew up in upstate NY, and spent several years living abroad in France, first at age 9, then again at age 18. She earned a Cours De La Civilization Française certificate at The Sorbonne and a BFA at the State University of New York at Binghamton before receiving her MFA from University of Georgia.
Kretz’s work has appeared in over 95 international newspapers and has been featured repeatedly in the New York Times, ArtPapers, Surface Design, Vanity Fair Italy, ELLE Japon, and PASAJES DISENO magazines. Her controversial painting “Blessed Art Thou” appeared in hundreds of international news sources, and continues to be published in university textbooks worldwide.
Exhibitions include the Museum of Arts & Design, Van Gijn Museum, Kunstraum Kreuzberg, Academy of Arts & Design at Tsinghua University in Beijing, Wignall Museum, Katonah Museum, Frost Museum, Fort Collins MOCA, Telfair Museum, Fort Lauderdale Museum, the Museo Medici, San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles, as well as Lyons Wier Ortt & 31Grand Gallery in NY, Chelsea Galleria and Hardcore Art Contemporary Space in Miami, and Packer/Schopf in Chicago.
She has received the NC Arts Council Grant, The South Florida Cultural Consortium Fellowship, The Florida Visual Arts Fellowship, and a Millay Colony Residency. After working as an Associate Professor and BFA Director at Florida International University for ten years, she relocated to the Washington, DC, area. Kretz currently works in her studio while giving workshops and lectures at various universities.
Her work can be seen at www.katekretz.com, on Flickr, and Facebook.