I have a memory from when I was a little girl, maybe 6 or 7 years old. I remember picking up a piece of my mother‘s silver jewellery, cold, hard and smooth. Holding it between my fingers I pinched it, trying to change its shape. I knew it was handmade, I knew that someones hands had manipulated the material into having those smooth delicate lines, had worked the seemingly unmoving metal into soft and flowing lines and yet it wouldn't move between my fingers. It seemed like magic.
So began my love affair with metals. Ever since I have been manipulating and playing with metal, softening its edges, polishing, tarnishing, hammering, making it move. Forming it so it sits close to the skin, warming to the heat of our bodies. Reflecting the joys and the pains that happen in our day to day. Creating lasting memories that sit upon our flesh.
I have always been inspired by the beauty that sits just outside the devastated. Finding beauty in the human form, in the determination of a weed that grow through cracked cement. My work finds joy and play on the darker side of things, Looking for balance and a silver lining. Delicate designs that allow the makers marks to occasionally sit upon the metals surface, reminding us that it was made by hand, finding beauty in its imperfections. Light and dark.
I have this memory of when I was just a little girl, holding a piece of jewellery and thinking how special it was that someones hands could do that. It seemed like magic. I have always wanted to be that magician.
Originally from the artistic village of Wakefield Quebec, Kathleen was raised surrounded by beauty and unusual artistic people. Raised in an old barn that had been lovingly transformed and built into a unique home by her father and always at the foot of her artist mother, Kathleen has had a keen eye and deep respect for materials and artistic technique since she was small. She has attended The Haliburton School if the Arts for both their Jewellery Essentials program as well as their artist blacksmithing program, completed the metal arts program at Georgian college and has had the honour of doing Blacksmithing at The Penland school of Craft in North Carolina. Kathleen has been an active member of the arts community wherever she has gone, recognizing it as a thread that holds us together. Stories of who we are and where we are told through our finger tips. She has taught for The Ottawa Board of Education and Fleming College, been on the board of various arts collectives, hosted wearable art shows, curated shows, hosted fund raisers and welcomed many to play in her studio. Kathleen has worked on pieces for The Royal Ontario Museum, The Children’s Aid Society and The City of Toronto. She has also created work for people she will never know, worked on commission pieces to celebrate life’s milestones, to remember lost loved ones, wedding bands, sculptures to say I love you, congratulations, I’ll never forget you. She sees all this work as equally important and finds it a deep honour to be invited to celebrate, recognize and commemorate life’s big moments with people she doesn’t know through her work.
Kathleens work can be found in various private and public collections.
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