Kate works with both paper and clay as mediums to create sculptural vessels. With an interest in the relationship between both materials, and how one informs the other, her collections often integrate the two disciplines with a focus on light, shadow and form.
Raised in South Yorkshire, Kate took a Foundation Course at Doncaster Art College where she found a love of the Applied Arts, the blurred line between 2D & 3D.
After an HND in Illustration she moved south to London to pursue a creative life, including editorial illustration, painting in the film industry & working on puppets for ITV’s Spitting Image.
Kate relocated to a house in York twenty three years ago with her husband, the illustrator David Semple, to raise their young family. This is the same house they live and work in today.
Clay took over as a primary interest during the pandemic. Kate’s motivation was to impart a sense of energy, ideas & emotion within the body of her 3D pieces, utilising all the hand-build methods of Coil, Slab & Pinch. Her process moves between spaces, from inside the home through winter to the garden in warmer months, firing her pieces in the old bike shed. Kate began creating vessels from paper because she liked how its sound and texture differed to clay, and to make use of an excess of leftover materials. “Paper is a humble material” she says “with endless possibilities”.
You can find Kate’s work through various platforms including Toast & Wondering People. If you wish to learn more about how Kate creates her paper vessels, she runs Workshops which are available to book through her online shop.
