Kate Clark, amazing sculptor and mother-to-be, lives in Manhattan, works in DUMBO and probably knows more about taxidermy, preserving animal skin and the world of hide-dealing than anyone else you know.

Chief Magazine: So, when you were a kid did you want to be an artist?

Kate Clark: Yeah, actually, my Dad was a painter, he had his own company, but he always painted and I painted, but I didn’t switch to sculpture until college- actually had a boyfriend in the sculpture department that was part of the switch… [laughing]…

Where’d you go to college?

I went to Cornell...

Ahhh!

Which I loved, but it wasn’t particularly fabulous for art at the time-

What time was that [laughing], if you don’t want to say that’s okay…

Let’s just say a while ago [laughing], it was good to have a well-rounded education there (at Cornell), but grad school really helped me. I got my BFA and MFA in sculpture; I went to Cranbrook for grad, which was great.

Cranbrook?

Yeah, Cranbrook Academy of Art, just a master’s program for art, it’s small, right outside Detroit, but it was perfect for me. I considered going to school in New York, but it was better to be away and not be overwhelmed by what everyone was making here [in New York].

When did you start doing this body of sculpture work stuff, was it in college, Cranbrook?     

No, I was doing steel sculpture in college and it was empowering because I could create what I wanted to and I became a good welder, but then I took six years off and moved to Italy and then came to New York and then went to grad school and when I started working on my thesis project, I was kind of in a rut and doing a lot of reading.  One great book, in particular, Becoming Human, and there was this one section that I really liked, which was about how we developed and how animals developed. So, I was experimenting with stuff and ideas.  My first pieces were really… I didn’t know whether to use all human features or some and they ended up very creature-y. [laughing]



So, where are you from originally?

New York.

Here, New York, New York?

Yeah, Manhattan, but we moved when I was five and went to Connecticut…

I used to live in Connecticut!

Oh really?

Well, I was born in China, but lived in Fairfield County for five years [ed note: Jacque is a world-traveling, bourgeois fuck], where did you live in Connecticut?

Stamford.

That’s where my first boyfriend, uh, ehhh… so, did you go to Stamford High?

Yeah! Stamford High!

God, I hope you didn’t know him.

We were probably off by a few years, so nothing to worry about.

Yeah, that’d be embarrassing.  So, when in your trajectory- from being at Cornell to being in a graduate program- did you hook up with ART364B?

Not until a couple of years ago, I had been graduated and living in New York for a while and working, like an actual job, and spending about 30 hours a week in the studio. And I met Melissa [Potter, another member of ART364B] and I didn’t know anyone else in the collective. I guess what’s so great about the group is that we all get to meet once a month, and think about and talk about what we’re all doing, and support each other. And that brings in the feminist side of this group, I mean, it’s just so competitive in the art world…

And you’re one 1/7th of this group, right?

Yeah, and we all do very, very different work. Most of them do pretty feminist focused work, and I’m really the only one who doesn’t. But, again, it’s just nice to have a supportive group and not have that competition, especially when all your friends are artists.