Kate Blacklock received her undergraduate degree from University of California at Santa Cruz (‘79) and her MFA (’87), in Ceramics from RISD. She has taught at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Rhode Island College and for nine years co-chaired the Ceramics Department at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, where she was Associate Professor. She has been teaching in the Industrial Design Department at RISD since 2002. Kate’s studio work has moved from sculptural ceramics to photography and painting. She has had solo exhibitions around the country including Franklin Parrasch Gallery in New York, The Works Gallery in Philadelphia and Shaw Guido Gallery in Michigan. She created a line of cast functional porcelains, retailing in museum stores and fine craft galleries. In 1996 she was an artist in residence at the Manufacture National de Sèvres, outside of Paris. Her works are in many private and public collections including The Mint Museum and Musée National de le Céramique. Recently she has worked on projects with the Design firm Jeffrey Beers International and has 2 Dimensional works at the Fountainbleau Hotel in Miami and the Intercontinental and Westin hotels in New York.
Combining nascent technology with ancient and typified form, Blacklock’s 3d printed ceramics are one result of a group exhibition instigated in 2014 by the artist, and involving five artists and 3d Systems — a company dedicated to developing new formats of printer that explore different base materials to print in. The CeraJet, a 3d printing technology capable of printing objects in ceramic, allows the design and rapid creation of remarkably intricate forms, Blacklock’s vessels find permeable and altogether more sculptural than immediately functional state — each core punctured with geometric holes in remarkable honeycomb-like construction. “Vessel 14b” gives a tangible sense of how the piece has been created by the printer; the ceramic, built up in coiling layers, seems caught in a viscous stasis after firing — the resulting patterns manifesting many relationships between figurative or decorative wares. 3D printing in clay
