Kate Kaman: Emerging Artist
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, US
By Vera van der Meij

Using sculpture to connect people is a goal an artist working in the public realm today hopes to achieve. Kate Kaman, 25 years young, has aimed to keep improving her art practice and has developed numerous public installations to date. She has already designed architecturally dynamic public artworks for the City of Philadelphia, The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the Philadelphia Flower Show, and the Sherman Mills of East Falls.

For her public artworks Kaman wants to examine sculpture and energize spaces, inventing situations to join people, ‘one project grows into the next, and I keep striving to connect with people.’ She likes to think of the public as a catalyst for her art. Relationships and community are often part of her inspiration for making public art.

She usually designs sculptures that capture the light and color of its surrounding environment. Works that have organic shape bring a feeling of the natural world into an industrial environment.

She uses public art as to enable her artistic vision. Designing a piece for a public place creates funds and opportunities to artists to realize their ideas. When receiving commission she wants her clients to understand that she is not interested in recycling old ideas, rather she is inspired a new by the challenges of each space. The public sculpture give her ‘wings to make art on a scale that would not be possible without a supportive public’, she says in an interview.

Her artwork "Growth Rings" (image), executed in 2006 in East Falls, Philadelphia, is an art work consisting of four concentric rings comprised of galvanized steel, epoxy, foam core, and fiberglass that span from 8ft to 4ft in diameter. Strung like a harp between an eighty-four foot tower and a fourteen foot pitched roof at Sherman Mills, this work seems to be suspended in mid-air. This site specific work exemplifies the physicality of this kind of art because of its installation, and a creation of symbolic landmark through art. Before the installation of "Growth Rings" there was no evidence of an artistic community outside their studio walls. ‘It just looked like a bunch of old factory buildings, [and] my intention for "Growth Rings" was for it to be a transformative landmark for this community. It is a creative whim in the sky line, that says, "artistic people are here. This is a place where art is valued".’

Her installation "Growth Rings" has been well received and has turned out to be successful for the Mills. It has been chosen for the cover of a newspaper and a few advertising brochures, and is a part of the “Sherman Mills tour”.

Currently, she is working on a sculpture for a real estate developer in L.A; ‘they gave me a site to work with between three buildings, and I proposed suspending six aluminium ellipses between these buildings. They will look like they are circles in the sky that are jumping off the glass buildings, or some kind of alien attack.’

She demonstrates that public art can play an important role in making a site work.

Vera van der Meij

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