Kathryn Blommel is currently based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She received her BFA from the University of Minnesota in 2025. She has exhibited at various venues, including the Katherine E. Nash Gallery, The New York Academy of Art, Gamut Gallery, ATELIER Gallery, Burl Gallery, Soo Visual Arts Center, and the Quarter Gallery at the University of Minnesota. Her art has been featured in several journals, such as the Yale Journal of Art and Art History, The Harvard Undergraduate Art Journal, See/Saw at the University of California, Berkeley, and The Columbia Undergraduate Journal of Art History (CUJAH) at Columbia University. Kathryn's artistic practice has received support from organizations including the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation, The McKnight Foundation, the National Society of Arts and Letters, The New York Academy of Art, The Stobart Foundation, the Central Minnesota Arts Board, and the University of Minnesota. In June 2025, she attended the New York Academy of Art's Summer Undergraduate Residency on an Academic Merit Scholarship.
Statement
My artistic practice focuses on charcoal and graphite drawing, where I combine the human figure with expansive landscapes to explore themes of memory, place, and inheritance. Recurring motifs, such as barren trees, mirrored reflections, and vast bodies of water, serve as metaphors for emotional terrain and generational continuity. Through these elements, I investigate how feminine identity is shaped and passed down through generations.
Drawing functions as both a visual language and a reflective process, allowing me to examine memory as something that is recalled, interpreted, and reformed over time. In my work, I explore intergenerational relationships and consider how women carry inherited emotional and psychological burdens through generations. The landscape acts as both a literal setting and a metaphor for lineage, loss, and the vast unknown. Through this process, I aim to honor the quiet resilience of women while acknowledging the ways memory can fragment, distort, or fade.