Iris Ocean

Kate Blacklock is a Providence-based artist who received her undergraduate degree from the University of California at Santa Cruz and her MFA from The Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). She has taught at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Rhode Island College, and for nine years co-chaired the Ceramics Department at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, where she was Associate Professor. She has been teaching in the Industrial Design Department at RISD since 2002. Kate’s studio work has moved from sculptural and functional ceramics to photography and painting. She has had solo exhibitions around the country including, New York, Philadelphia, and in Michigan. In 1996, she was an artist-in-residence at the Manufacture National de Svres, outside of Paris. Her works are in many private and public collections. “In the current series of photographs, called Translucence, I have been exploring the line between realism and abstraction. The large-scale images of glass vessels piled on top of each other are both bold explorations of color and vivid depictions of reflections, patterns and details. The washes of colors created by the complex lighting and layering of glass produce painterly effects. As with all my work I want the audience to be drawn in by a bold presence and then to discover more and more layers over time.”