Kate McCammon

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Kate McCammon, featured in AQ Volume V is a Philadelphia-based mixed-media artist. She earned her BFA in Painting from the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore in 2012 and her MFA in Studio Art from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia in 2016. Her work has been displayed in a number of group exhibitions, including at First Street Gallery in New York City, NY; Gross McCleaf Gallery in Philadelphia, PA; and The Art Trust in West Chester, PA, among others. In 2020 and 2021, she had solo exhibitions at AUTOMAT Gallery in Philadelphia and at Curio. Gallery & Creative Supply in Lancaster, PA. Her work has also been featured in Maake Magazine, Issue 16.

In the spring of 2024, she was included in a three-person exhibition titled In Vulnerability, curated by project ieerie and exhibited at Penn State’s Woskob Family Gallery. Currently working in photo collage and exploring themes around identity, loss, and memory, she has been creating an installation she refers to as Journal Portraits, a series of small-scale portraits that are inspired by personal journals and family photos.


https://www.instagram.com/katemccammon

What inspired you to become an artist, and how did you decide to commit to this path?

At an early age, art always came so naturally. It was ingrained in who I was. I was always drawing—whether in the corners of homework assignments, in piles of sketchbooks, or on the walls of my childhood home. I grew up in small-town West Virginia with four other siblings, including my twin brother, and even more cats. My parents were both busy doctors. Art became somewhat of an escape—my outlet to express myself within a large, hectic family.

My art teacher, Georgette Griffith, became a huge inspiration during my formative teen years and nurtured my passion. It was because of her that I committed to going to art school. Some of my favorite memories are the trips I took with my dad when I was deciding on where to go for my undergraduate degree. We visited schools in New York City, Chicago, Columbus, Baltimore, and Savannah. In the end, it was the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) that stole my heart and exposed me to a community and network that would eventually help pave the way for my artistic path.


Could you share the story or concept behind your recent work?

Journal Portraits has been an ongoing photo collage series over the past few years. It began in 2021 and was initially a side project that was formed from wanting to connect with my dad. When he passed away in 2018, I inherited some of his belongings—including a journal he had kept through medical school. I was enamored with every fragile page, anatomical sketch, and cryptic note inside the delicate book. His writings and scribbles made me think of my own obsessive journaling habit from my art school days and beyond.

Throughout my art education, I would journal nonstop. I wrote about being in the studio—the highs, the lows—and about art influences and teachers’ feedback. I would scrapbook sentimental museum tickets or restaurant receipts and jot down lists of exhibitions or residencies I wanted to apply to. Needless to say, these journals became so full they’d rarely close. I was so excited to discover that Dad journaled, too, and knew this connection would eventually find a way into my practice. Fast forward a few years, and the first few Journal Portraits were made.

I collaged printed photographs of journal pages, copies of old family photographs, and images of me and my dad, and sometimes veils of sheer fabric. I saw these fragmented portraits as reconstructed memories and as a narrative quest about grief and the ways in which we document our lives. While the series began as a way to cope with my dad’s passing, I eventually realized a broader connection with my own practice of journaling, which over time evolved from concerning purely artistic matters to becoming a therapeutic outlet that would unmask facets of my own identity and the various parts of myself.


What was the most challenging part of your path so far? How are you navigating this obstacle?

I think any life transition, whether it’s a loss, an end to a relationship, a move to another place, etc., can create inevitable bumps—sometimes boulders—along the path. Like so many of us, I’ve experienced formative transitions and my own mental health challenges. Recent struggles have shifted my relationship with my art practice. Now more than ever, my artmaking has become a way to cope, process, accept, and heal. It’s become a channel through which to navigate complex emotions and change.

If it weren’t for this outlet, the boulders that have fallen along my path would still be impenetrable roadblocks. Yet little by little, they gradually shrink down to stepping stones until they are ghostly imprints in the dirt—no longer obstructing me, but still very much a part of my journey.


What role does experimentation and exploration play in your artistic practice?

It plays a fundamental role. I see collage as a very experimental practice. The directness and pace of collage, coupled with working small-scale, always lend themselves to moments of discovery—which, for me, is essential. The output is sometimes serious, often ghostly, but the process can be playful, like unwrapping a present or experimenting with a puzzle of your own making.

When creating a Journal Portrait, I never know how it will look in the end. I’ll find formal and narrative relationships as I engage with piles of scraps and juxtapose images together. Often a particular word from a journal page will spark a move, and other times I’ll be motivated by a photo fragment of a sentimental landscape or family member.

I also love using printed photos of finished Journal Portraits as collage material. This process takes me back to my painting practice from years and years ago when I would paint over old paintings. Sometimes the history of the original would show through or become something new, a process that always involved an element of surprise. Thinking about Journal Portraits as an installation is also a huge part of my exploration with the series. I become so excited by the relationship that each individual portrait has with each other and the immersive experience that five hundred (and counting) collages create for the viewer. At its core, I feel as though the series is an ongoing exploration of vulnerability.


Do you have any start or stop rituals before creating?

I definitely feel I need certain things to get situated for a creative rhythm. Most of the time, this includes Taylor Swift (with a current emphasis on The Tortured Poets Department), a cozy sweatshirt, a caffeinated latte, a tidy worktable, and a hefty pile of photos to work with.

I’ll often spend a lot of time gathering my source material to have printed, which is an important phase of my practice before even stepping foot into my studio. I’ll flip through old family albums or scroll through photos on my phone. I’ll also thumb through the journals, stopping every so often to photograph their pages—sometimes from various angles, zoomed in on certain words, or just as a page is turning. From there, I have the photos printed so I can assess them collectively before cutting bits and pieces away until my worktable (or kitchen counter, depending on where I’m working) is a mess of scraps, like a pile of leaves waiting to be raked.


What message do you hope your art conveys to the world?

I hope it conveys to others that it’s okay to be your authentic self. It’s okay to be vulnerable. It’s okay not to hide. My work, and the Journal Portrait series in particular, has helped me with the ongoing challenge of accepting parts of myself and sharing their stories. While my portraits are silhouetted images of me and the people close to me, I hope that those who encounter the pieces are able to see a bit of themselves in each one. I remember a time when I was really shy about sharing this body of work and when my collages were often veiled with layers of sheer fabric. Overtime, I became less and less interested in the idea of the veil. I no longer wanted to hide. Instead, I wanted to fully embrace the materiality of the photos and vulnerability of the content. I hope my work conveys a sense of curiosity and courage around vulnerability and ultimately leads to connection and community.


Share a mantra or favorite quote that keeps you going.

For my MFA graduation, my dad gave me a card that had a Rachel Bright poem on the back. It was a whimsical little poem about looking on the bright side, being kind, and remembering that anything is possible. At the top of the card, before the poem, Dad wrote: “The path is the goal.”