Kate Ruddle is a conceptual fabric sculptor who moved to Vermont to create a sustainable “self-made life” with art at its center.
Drawings are the foundation of her artist practice. She uses drawings meditatively, creatively, and experimentally, using them to plan sculptures and play with ideas. They are an extension of her hand and a way to think. While her sewn sculptures and fabric installations can take weeks to complete, drawings are immediate. Almost everything she creates starts with a drawing or in some way is a drawing.
She loves fabric’s potential for movement and its ability to capture light. She always wanted to make a drawing that “came off of the wall” and fabric is a part of that process. Conceptually fabric is a flexible material: it can evoke the tangible with references to clothing, industry, and history, and it can evoke intangible; from light, to breathing, to air.
Ruddle has a BFA in Painting from Indiana University, Bloomington and an MFA in Sculpture from the San Francisco Art Institute. She has exhibited widely and taught fabric sculpture and drawing as a community educator and an adjunct professor for over fourteen years. More recently she completed a textile residency in Blönduós, Iceland and Vermont Artists’ Week at the Vermont Studio Center.
