Kate MacDowell sculpts haunting
porcelain figures of animals, natural
elements, mythological creatures,
bones, and viscera—all with striking detail. After earning her MAT in
English, teaching, and traveling, she
began studying ceramics full time
in 2004. Her work deals with the
power play between humankind and
nature. She now shows her artwork
worldwide. You can find her work at
www.katemacdowell.com.
KM: Not really, I tend to have an idea for a
piece pop into my head, usually sparked by a
case study I read about a particular environmental issue or an animal form I want to explore. I actually get most of my ideas while hiking and letting my mind wander. My family also
works in the environmental field—on rainforest
conservation and climate change, for example,
so sometimes images or articles they pass on
will germinate ideas.
Then, I go through a process of doing a little
background research to flesh out the narrative in my own mind, and collecting many
photographic images and scientific drawings
for source material before making exploratory
sketches. Most pieces take me about two weeks
to sculpt, not counting time for firing or finishing, so I tend to try to avoid repeating the
same idea exactly unless I’m making a collective
installation or grouping.
So, for example, my piece Only you can prevent
started when I learned about the spread of the
destructive pine bark beetle in British Columbia and parts of the U.S. I read the theory that
fire suppression campaigns as well as global
warming created an ideal environment for this
beetle and wanted to highlight the irony of an
environmental protection policy with unintended consequences, so I created a sculpture in
SciArt in America April 2015
which the beetle attacks the head of ‘Smokey’
the bear in the way it would attack a tree trunk.
I have a solo exhibit, “Completely Exposed,”
opening at the Mindy Solomon Gallery in Miami on April 10, where I am showing new work,
which explores diverse ideas from rhesus monkeys used in medical research and the martial
behavior of ants to skin-changing myths.
DM: One of your largest pieces, Daphne, depicts
the mythological nymph shattered, mouth agape and
paired with appendages broken off at her trunk. What
drew you to make a piece about her, and what does
mythology mean to you and your work?
KM: Mythology is so evocative, both of cultural history and psychological experiences,
and I like how a name can conjure up an entire
story. Sometimes I’m also responding to an
earlier piece of art, so this piece is actually a
deconstruction of Bernini’s marble sculpture, in
which Daphne is pursued by an Apollo bent on
rape. The physicality, passionate emotion, and
grand tragedy of baroque sculpture struck me as
a perfect style to express a much more contemporary disaster.
I created my own Daphne as a response to my
experiences as a backpacker and hiker in Oregon and Washington stumbling across clear-cut
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