Artist Bio
Kate Wurtzel (PhD) is an artist, art educator, and researcher who currently works as an Assistant Professor of Art Education at Appalachian State University. She has a background in making and teaching art for many years in museums and public schools. Dr. Wurtzel has a passion for exploring the creative process with her students and considering how we, as artists and creative humans in the world, can merge art with the gesture of care for the environment and for one another. Her work includes abstracted landscapes, naturalistic and fantastical creatures that blur the line between reality and imaginary worlds, and the play between that which is perceptible and that which is in im-perceptible (yet always present). Her work is informed by philosophy and theory, contemporary artists focused on distorted realism and abstracted landscapes, and most recently time spent in the northern part of Iceland. She employs body movement, ritualized practices, and meditation as a means to connect with her environment and creative practice.