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Biography
Kate Marin earned her Bachelor’s degree in Art and Theology at Benedictine College in 2012, and continued to teach Drawing as an adjunct professor for two years more. She discovered her call to work in sculpture when, in her first experience of the medium, her hands seemed fluent in the language of figure and clay.
Her gift led her to the Sacred Art School in Florence, Italy, where her profound experience of this calling helped her persevere in advanced study. During the two year program at the Sacred Art School and an additional year spent studying privately in Florence, she was chosen by her teacher, Cody Swanson, to help him complete a commission of “The Visitation” for a chapel in Madrid, Spain and had two of her student works win grand prize and first-runner up in a national juried art competition sponsored by the Archdiocese of Kansas City, Kansas. Her first professional commission for “Holy Family’s Return to Nazareth,” for St. Benedict’s Abbey brought her back to the States in August 2019 to begin her career.
Kate currently lives in Kansas City, Missouri, where she pursues her vocation as sculptor – available for projects large and small. She creates works that help call people deeper into the truth of their own mystery, and accompany them on the journey toward the infinite. In her personal journey, she has met the infinitude of the Triune God in the person of Jesus Christ. She hopes that her works will, in a similar and derivative way, “make perceptible...the world of the spirit, of the invisible, of God.” (St. Pope John Paul II, Letter to Artists)
She looks forward to many future works for the Church, communities, homes and galleries. Commissions, questions, and proposals for collaboration are most welcome. Contact her here.
Artist Statement
What is real?
I think this is the question we are all trying to answer. I think ultimately everything we do in life is in some way our attempt to respond to this question. It lies deep within our souls in that place where we long for something more, something beyond us. We all must respond to this question, each in our own unique, unrepeatable way. We can try to ignore it but it always comes back, causing our soul to cry out once more, "what is real?”.
The creative process has become my response to this question. It is my way of communicating with that longing and how I attempt to better understand myself and the world around me. I have been looking for the best mediums, techniques, and subject matter to aid me in this dialogue since the beginning of my creative journey and I have found figurative sculpture to be my truest means of exploring the questions and desires that are deepest in my soul.
Clay is a material that feels natural in my hands. It is not something I struggle against, it is something I search with. The clay holds form but can also be moved and adjusted many times as I work to grasp the truth of the forms. The challenge of working in three dimensions forces me to understand my subject matter as it exists in its fullness; I have to study it from every angle, working to comprehend how all its parts work together and relate to each other. When working with the human figure I must remember that the reality of my subject goes beyond what I can merely see with my eyes. Every human form has a soul. Within them lies their experience, full of joys and sorrows, triumphs and struggles, and they too share in my desire for what is real. This I must search out as well, and in the process of doing so somehow it helps me to answer my own longing question.