Kate Kretz grew up in Upstate, New York. At 18, she went to Paris with $200 in her pocket. She drew plaster casts in an École Des Beaux Arts class and earned a Cours de civilization Française certificate at The Sorbonne while working as an au pair for a prominent French family. Returning to the States, she put herself through school, earning a BFA at Binghamton University (SUNY Foundation Award for Excellence in Fine Arts, Harpur College Departmental Honors in Art, and Harpur College Academic Honors) while working as a picture framer. She then earned an MFA from the University of Georgia.
Kretz was trained as a painter, but creates across disciplines, choosing the most potent medium for each project. Recent work includes corrective manifestations of the truth made from deconstructed MAGA hats, human hair embroideries, dense, bas-relief cotton floss embroideries, highly wrought oil and acrylic paintings, pyrography (wood burning) and tiny silverpoint drawings on found silver objects. She is generally focused on creating time-intensive, intricate work that reveals difficult truths.
Exhibitions include the Museum of Arts and Design, Design Museum Holon, House Van Gijn, Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien, Academy of Arts & Design at Tsinghua University, Racine Art Museum, Wignall Museum of Contemporary Art, Katonah Museum of Art, Frost Art Museum, Museum of Art Fort Collins, Telfair Museums, NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale, and the San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles. Collections include: Frost Art Museum, the Belger Family Foundation, Manuel de Santaren, Patricio & Adriana Santos Wills, Morris Corporation, Arts and Humanities Council of Montgomery County’s Works on Paper Collection in the Public Arts Collection, Nina Fuentes, Jerry Cullum, Jeff Speck, and Rachel Camber, among others. Kretz’s work has appeared in over 95 international newspapers and was featured repeatedly in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Miami Herald, HuffPost, The Atlanta Journal–Constitution, Art Papers, Surface Design Journal, and Hyperallergic.
She’s received numerous state grants from Maryland, North Carolina, and Florida, and the SECAC award for Outstanding Artistic Achievement. She’s a James Renwick Alliance’s 2020 Distinguished Artist, and a Fulbright Specialist. She was an Associate Professor/BFA Director at Florida International University for ten years. Her book, Art from Your Core: A Holistic Guide to Visual Voice, was released by Intellect Press in March of 2024. She lives in Maryland with her partner, her daughter, a Boxer named Eldred, and a magnificent Black Tupelo tree.