Katherine Clements

I create large-scale paintings, installations, and sculptures composed of meticulously hand-rendered glass panels. Working with frit, a crushed glass material, I place loose granules onto kiln shelves in a process akin to monk sand drawing. The work is slow, precise, and meditative, requiring sustained attention and acceptance of uncertainty as the material inevitably shifts during firing. This interplay of control and surrender anchors my practice.

Drawing on Victorian-era interiors, my work employs lush botanicals and ornate patterning to examine beauty as a cultural construct—subjective, unstable, and ultimately unattainable. I explore how nature has historically informed ornamentation and the beautification of space, reflecting broader systems of taste, value, and power. As the natural world continually transforms and resists ownership, so too does anything society deems “beautiful.”

By resurrecting dated aesthetics, I pose enduring questions about taste and excess. Why do certain styles lose cultural value once they become widely adopted? Glass—a material defined by tension and fragility—is central to these inquiries. Its potential to crack, shatter, or shift embeds impermanence into the work, a quiet undercurrent beneath seductive surfaces. The work invites prolonged looking, balancing allure with unease, and considers decadence and transience as intertwined forces. These works linger as fragile, luminous propositions: elusive and perpetually on the verge of dissolution