BIO
Kate Clements constructs delicate and ornate large scale paintings and installations comprised of kiln fused glass panels. Working with frit, a type of crushed glass, she sifts, scatters, and pushes the sugar-like substance on a kiln shelf to form dimensional drawings. The wafer-thin panels reference naturalistic designs and floral motifs that she uses to explore ideas of beauty, taste, and impermanence. Utilizing the seductive qualities of glass, Clements draws the viewer in, but upon further inspection the work reflects a nervous tension and precariousness that is palpable.
Clements received her MFA in Glass from the Tyler School of Art & Architecture in Philadelphia and her BFA in Painting from the Kansas City Art Institute. She has been awarded residencies at Studios Inc and the Charlotte Street Foundation in Kansas City, the Museum of Arts & Design in New York City, Pilchuck Glass School, and S12 Gallery in Bergen, Norway. Clements’ work has been exhibited at the Arkansas Museum of Fine Art, the Bellevue Arts Museum, Delaware Contemporary, Houston Center of Contemporary Craft, SOFA Chicago, Urban Glass (NYC), and S12 Gallery (Norway.) Her work has been featured in Italian Vogue Gioiello, American Craft Magazine, and New Glass Review 36,37,38, 42, and 43.
About
ON VIEW & UPCOMING
The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art presents Personal Best, a free exhibition celebrating six local artist-athletes whose dual pursuits put them at the top of their game. Through a variety of styles and media, their work reveals that true achievement is built on relentless commitment, turning everyday effort into continual growth.
NIGHT SHIFT
February 26th 6-7 PM
Nelson Atkins Museum of Fine Art
Night/Shift: Warm Up is your cue to shake off winter’s last chill and set your night in motion with Kansas City’s creative community. Inspired by the exhibition Personal Best and the interplay between art and athletics, tap into what it means to stretch, strive, and show up — for yourself and one another. Meet artist-athletes in Personal Best and chat about their work on view.
BELOVED
Kiosk Gallery Kansas City, MO
Opening Friday February 20th, 6-9PM On view : February 14th - March 21st
Beloved’s first iteration was in 2016, when Clements began collecting flower arrangements from funerary homes in Philadelphia. Understanding them as final farewells from families to loved ones, she began placing the flowers in a glass vitrine. It became a modest, if ultimately futile, act of care. What emerged was not a fixed memorial, but a living system shaped by time, inviting viewers to pause and return as the flowers lose their discrete identities and settle into a cloud of organic residue.
The work considers how loss slowly moves from abstraction into lived experience, becoming something carried rather than resolved. Beloved approaches mourning not as closure, but as a quiet, ongoing negotiation with absence—one that accumulates gently, continuously evolves, and never fully settles.
