Ceramic artist Katie Kimmel admits she’s always had the impulse to make things. Since receiving her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2015 where she studied ceramics, video, and painting, she’s been hard at work, working from her studio in the Mojave Desert, California.
“A lot of the mediums that I work with are associated with kid crafts, and it could be that I only feel that way because they are mediums I’ve been using since I was a kid,” she admits in an interview with Consort Design. “Sometimes I’ll really start to think about my work and I’m like, ‘Ok, I’m not an artist, I’m a 10-year-old living in an apartment’. Other times I’m like, ‘I AM an artist and my soul is 7 feet tall.’ I think that is a weird insecurity a lot of artists have – so maybe I became an artist when I started feeling that way.”
And with almost 35k fans on Instagram, she needn’t be insecure. Her pieces – childlike, funny, and unapologetically cool – take after food and animals, adding a humoristic edge to their surroundings. Describing her humor as 98% angel, 2% devil, Kimmel says she’s very much inspired by her trinket collection. “I love tchotchkes and mean-looking porcelain dolls,” she jokes. “I always leave an antique mall feeling very inspired.”
“My style is pretty true to my hand, so there hasn’t been much change there,” she adds, talking about her creative process. “Over the years I think my general craftsmanship has improved, and I have a better sense of direction of what I should be making.”
Take a look at some of her work in the gallery below.
