Kristen was born in a small town on the coast of Massachusetts. As a child, she was surrounded by artwork, she was taught by sculptor Sherri Brown in preschool, and in kindergarten became close friends with the granddaughter of Paul Manship, at whose home she became enamored with his sculptures. After devoting herself to the practice of art as a young child, she went on to win regional recognition in high school as a participant in Art All-states, and a recipient of the Silver Key Scholastic Art Award. In her college years she attended both Cleveland Institute of Art, and University of Vermont, ultimately receiving a degree from University of Vermont, after a difficult decision to favor the breadth of a liberal arts education over the technical focus of art school. After school, she moved back to Cleveland, and began participating in group shows at the River Gallery and in the Ohio State Fair. In 2019 she had her first solo exhibition at Brick Ceramics. Since then she has shown work at Gallery U, Abattoir Gallery, Wolfs Gallery, and Waterloo Arts Gallery, where she worked with artist Anna Chapman to create an immersive themed show in spring of 2021. In 2022 she participated in the CAN Triennial, a city wide showcase of North East Ohio artists, where her work was purchased for the Cleveland Art Association (Carta) collection.
Kristen’s primary medium is clay, she creates dimensional sculptures and relief tiles, and also paints and works with mixed media, recently learning the art to create large scale parade puppets. Her practice draws inspiration and perspective from a broad swath of subject matter, biological systems, philosophy, history, psychology, literature, and architecture. As a process artist, her works unfold as conversations between form and content, playing with scale, color, and material to tell stories and convey feeling. Kristen also teaches, she works with nonprofits to offer community classes in local artistic spaces, and also works with individuals to facilitate custom ceramics projects. Currently Kristen is working on a body of work to be shown at Wolfs Gallery in the spring of 2023.
