2026
Exhibition Residencies
Residency Period: 8/6/26 - 3/8/26
Kate Rusek is a multi-disciplinary artist assembling highly tactile sculptures, textile, garment, and installation with an emphasis on Craft and materiality. Her work transmutes wasting and waste matter into abundant, maximalist forms with dynamic biophilic textures. Her research and writing examines the connective edges and dissonant intersections between systems thinking and the natural world. Rooted in Post Natural Studies, her clay objects emerge from complex processes, where the manufactured relents to fluid chaos, and possess an alluring strangeness that emerges when the body recognizes a connection to our planet’s vitality. Rusek’s sculptures are receptacles of material histories, calcified memory, and imagined futures; a menagerie of symbiotic ecosystems where small parts are essential to a larger harmonious whole.
Using large quantities of collected and constructed objects, the artist creates composite forms and dynamic biophilic textures that interrogate socially constructed themes of beauty, value, and material narrative. Engaging with history laden excesses, Rusek shapes scenes that examine the binary between the living and manufactured worlds with an emphasis on a somatic experience of Craft. Through a lens of deep time, particular interest is placed on synthetic and highly manufactured elements as an action to transform anthropogenic ruin into a counter-economic act of rebellion. The artist’s work is a method to posit a regenerative future through a broader care ethic and lens of desire and abundance.
Porcelain glaze site specific installation, 108x114x3inches.
Porcelain glaze 12x12x10inches.
Porcelain glaze glass mirror 12x10x4inches
Porcelain glaze 13x10x10inches
Kate Rusek received an M.A in Design for Sustainability from Savannah College of Art and Design and dual B.F.As in Sculpture and Costume Design from The University of Miami. Rusek has been awarded residencies at Millay Arts, The Archie Bray Foundation, Socrates Sculpture Park, Red Lodge Ceramics Center, and Vermont Studio Center among others. She is the Devra Freelander Fellow at Socrates Sculpture Park for 2023 and the recipient of a Windgate Distinguished Fellowship for Innovation in Craft. She currently has public sculptures installed in Atlanta, GA, Canton, NY and Tucumcari, NM.
Select exhibition venues include Trotter and Scholer (NYC), Culture Object (NYC), Shelter Gallery (NYC), diRosa Center for Contemporary Art (Napa, CA),, Socrates Sculpture Park (NYC), Mizuma, Kips, and Wada (NYC), Material for the Arts (NYC), Geheim Gallery (Bellingham, WA), The Vestibule (Seattle), The Archie Bray Foundation (Helena, MT) and the Gallery of Visual Arts at The University of Montana among others. Additionally, she is a Daytime Emmy winner for puppet costume design on Sesame Street. This work informs a portion of the artist's approach to tactile research, devotional craftsmanship, and sculptural materiality in her practice. She has built a career as a bespoke Tailor, builder of specialty costumes, and design/builder of puppets and puppet garments as a member of IASTE Local 764. Among many highlights, she is a staff member at Saturday Night Live since 2016 and contributed her expertise to the film, television, and live theater industry in New York City for over 15 years. Rusek splits her time between New York City and the Washington Coast.
Upcoming Residencies
2026
Technical Development Residency
