Kay, educated as a scientist, worked with medical devices: heart pacemakers, bone growth stimulators, ear implants and lastly and most challenging, the Victor Change artificial heart. All through her professional life, Kay has maintained a vivid interest in the arts and developed skill and knowledge through the Sydney college of the Arts and workshops run by international artists. During this period, she carved sculptures designed for the urban landscape but later focussed on art jewellery – still with a sculptural element. In 2018 she returned to her love of sculpture mentoring under a local Newcastle sculptor and began entering regional shows (see below). Her residential scaled sculpture continues to be sold from her market stall (StudioKY) in the Hunter and Newcastle regions.


Kay is Currently showing

4 Faced Totem at The Lost Souls Bar


Statement From the Artist:

“I began sculpturing 50 years ago but abandoned it for a career. In my 60s I reconnected with
sculpture after a period of creating art jewelry: what a liberation! The whole body was involved not
just fingers. My work is inspired by a theme or form but during the creative process the sculpture
takes over.
I have a love-hate relationship with “retinal art” as Duchamp expressed art that was intended to
merely visually please the viewer. Like a lot of artists I do want the viewer to like the work but I also
want the mind to be evoked. To achieve this element of surrealism in my work I use a number of
approaches: In some pieces it is the placement of objects outside their usual context, in others it is
the concept of transformation and metamorphosis and in others it is the contradiction between
appearance and reality. I began this journey when I met a shoemaker in the 1980s, a fellow artist
who had just completed a man’s Oxford Brogue dress shoe in silver leather for herself. It truly
evoked a riot of thoughts.
When I doodle sculpturally, I mould figures in clay – stoneware or synthetic. The essential feature in
these figures Is a sense of movement. The contradiction between the perceived movement and the
rigidity of the medium engages the mind beyond the visual.
I have recently recommenced a journey with wire which I began in 2012 but had put to one side. I
have a fantasy of combining it with hand-built ceramics using random weaving techniques. The
viewer, having seen the sculpture, is internally conflicted between the subconscious perception of
pliable fibre baskets while the eyes see hard unyielding stone and wire. This journey with wire will
be supplemented by the weaving of giant tubes of waste copper wire. This weaving technique
transforms the rigid wire into a flexible tube. It is an exciting prospect of discovery!
The transformation of discarded PET plastic into objects of beauty contains a powerful contradiction
between waste and art, and between the reality of the almost indestructibility plastic and the
perceived fragility of engraved and pierced glass lace. It is an artistic pathway that I have been
following since 2019 but up to now has been limited to decorative items. Now, in 1923, I am
integrating it with the wire journey to create sculptures. This modern Punto in Aria (stitch in the air)
will be a form of constructive sculpture: the challenge will be to maintain the tension between the
visual and the material – between beauty and waste.”