To create work that both startles and surprises.
To find the extraordinary in the ordinary. To nudge viewers to find the beauty in everyday objects. To play with the contrast between hard and soft, heavy and light, masculine and feminine. To revel in the simple pleasure of creation. To create something where nothing existed before. To induce joy.
Bio
Growing up in a suburb of LA, Cat’s father, a mechanical engineer, taught her the joys of problem-solving while her mother taught her to sew, life skills that have served her well for many years. She attended graduate school at Alfred University, NY where she received an MFA in Ceramics in 1985. After returning to California, she formed a business partnership with fellow artist, Chris Brown, and together they built a live/work space in the industrial section of Berkeley, the first of its kind in the city.
Cat lived there for the next twenty-five years, surrounded by the rumble of freight trains and by the clank and hum of ink factories, steel foundries, and machine shops. Besides running her own upholstery business, she worked with an agent creating dozens of large scale ceramic commissions for The Spectrum Restaurant Group, Kaiser Hospitals, and private homes. Later, wanting to explore a more personal direction in her art and influenced by the blue collar world in which she lived, she began constructing sculptures from everyday objects–repurposed shovels, discarded work gloves, organza overlays, and woven extension cords. She was a featured artist at the Stephan Wirtz gallery and included in group shows in the Bay Area, Los Angeles, and New York.
In 1997, The New Yorker magazine published a full-page photo of Cat’s found glove sculpture, Bad Boys, a piece she had exhibited earlier that year in a group show at Bergamot Station in Santa Monica. The show titled Murder included artists such as Sue Coe; Leon Golub; Mike Kelly; Yoko Ono; and Andy Warhol.
After a bicycle accident made it difficult to stand for long periods of time, Cat reluctantly gave her sculpture studio and channeled her energy into writing fiction. Her published stories include “Sickness Can Do That to a Man”, winner of the Chautauqua Literary Journal First Prize for Prose in 2007 and an Honorable Mention from Boulevard magazine.
Fast forward to 2018, Cat was once again back in her studio and invited to participate in a group show entitled “Mounds, Piles, and Massings” at Seton Hall University in New Jersey. Because she needed to make something that could be easily shipped, she switched her focus from piles to the things that make piles. The result were five organza dump trucks, suspended from filament lines that floated high above the gallery floor, thereby reducing fourteen-tons of machinery to a few ounces of ghostly fabric. From there it was a natural leap to creating organza truck tires, chain saws, and logs, or as a friend pointed out, “feminizing boy toys”. Later she expanded her repertoire to include hand-sewn buttons on plastic bottles, willow branches shaped into shadow poems, and woven paper pieces.
Cat and her husband reside in Petaluma, California.
Testimonials
“Cat Alden’s new body of work is poetic, ghostly, playful, and evocative. Color can be translucent and subtle or searing. Using common goods, twigs, buttons, toys, she reimagines the ordinary… and presents a lyrical transformation of the familiar. Her magic is the “thread” hardly visible, that adheres these translucent memories, twigs and quotidian objects, with adornment and the details captivate.
There is a continual theme in the content of her work over the years of manual labor; think tractors, hardware store, (not art supplies) or the tool shed. The work itself reflects another kind of manual labor. The hand of the seamstress and hours lived behind a sewing machine. What comes out of this common trade is served up in living color, ephemeral, fun and unexpected.”
– Deborah Oropallo, Video Artist & Painter
“As an art advisor, I have worked with Catherine Alden for over twenty years. Catherine has completed over 15 major commissions for my clients. She is a consummate professional and an extremely talented artist. Catherine works in a variety of mediums which demonstrates her creativity and versatility. It is always a pleasure to visit her studio and be introduced to her current body of work.”
– Suzy Locke, Suzy R. Locke and Associates, Fine Art Consultants and Appraisers
“In 2020, I curated a show entitled Mounds, Piles, and Massings for Seton Hall University in New Jersey. Knowing Cat Alden’s sculptures investigated such themes as heavy equipment, manual labor and its residue in recycled tools, and prosaic materials, I invited her to submit a piece for the show. The result was four white organza dump trucks gently swaying from the gallery’s ceiling. “Everything Heavy Becomes Light,” the name of the piece, opened up new thematic territory for the show, providing a counterpoint to the investigation of mass, weight and accumulation of materials in the iconography of pile forms. Her fabricated dump trucks whimsically sabotaged the subject of weight and mass as her choice of white organza, the material of wedding dresses, conceptually undermined the implied materiality of the show’s subject. Once installed, it was as if her dump trucks could fly, could hover, could transport us on their wispy bodies into a cathartic release from the weight and gravity of life.
– Greg Leshé, Curator, Interdisciplinary Artist
Curriculum Vitae
1985
Master of Fine Arts
NY State College of Ceramics, Alfred University, New York
EDUCATION
2024
Tools As Art, Curated
Petaluma Arts Center, CA
2024
The Glove Project, A traveling exhibition
In partnership with Michael Woolsey
The Watershed Building, Petaluma, CA and Yorba Winery, Sutter Creek, CA
2022
Solo Show
Magic Shop Studios, Petaluma, CA
2019
Earth Becomes Sky, group show
Petaluma Art Center, CA
2019
Mounds, Piles, and Massing, group show
Walsh Gallery, Seton Hall University, NJ
1995
Murder, group show curated by John Yau
Bergamot Station, Santa Monica, CA
Show traveled to:
- The Thread Works, New York, NY
- Centre Gallery, Miami, FL
1993
Beyond the Written Word, group show
San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art, San Jose, CA
1993
Objecthood: Recent Sculpture
Mills College, Oakland, CA
1992
The Object is Bound, group show
Stephan Wirtz Gallery, San Francisco, CA
1991
Introductions
Stephan Wirtz Gallery, San Francisco, CA
EXHIBITIONS
2023
Haiku: November
Private home, Berkeley, CA willow sticks
2023
Chamesh
Private home, Petaluma, CA, 5’ x 3’ button wall piece
2023
Autumn Night
Emanate Salon, 72” x 14” woven paper piece
2022
Sky Bound
Berkeley, CA, 23” x 12” x 8” cast bronze
2022
Wisdom
Private home, Petaluma, CA 72” x 22” x 12” poem stick sculpture
2022
Custom shadow-stick sculpture
Private home, Petaluma
2021
Allegro V
Inverness, CA 40” x 24” x 18” poem stick sculpture
2021
Custom shadow-stick sculpture
Heinrich home, Inverness
2004
Two 5’x20’ mosaic murals
Andale Restaurants
SF International Airport-Terminals 1 and 3
2002
12’x3’ hand painted mural
Guaymas Restaurant, Rancho Mirage, CA
2001
6’x3’ painted tile dragon mural
Hofstra University Dining Hall
8’x3’ Hand painted Tuscan mosaic for pizza oven
Prego Restaurant, Los Angeles, CA
2000
7’x4’ ceramic vine
Napa Valley Grill, Westwood, CA
2000
Cook line bas-relief oceanic mural: 70’x3.5’
Twelve dining room oceanic-themed mosaic panels: 3’x3’ each
Reception area mosaic and bas-relief mural: 15’x4’
Tutto Mare Restaurant
1999
Chinese Gate Mosaic columns and lintel 9’x4.5’
Private home, Berkeley, CA
1998
White mosaic columns at entrance and cook line 9’x30” each
Brazio Restaurant, Danville, CA
1996
Mosaic and ceramic logo clock 24”x36”
Lark Creek Café Walnut Creek, CA
1995
Ceramic fish mural 3’x50’
Tutto Mare Restaurant, Tiberon, CA
1994
Steel and silkscreen sculpture 3.5x8’
Curtis Ford Dealership, Petaluma, CA
1990
Harold Debey Memorial Mural Mosaic 3’x4’
SJUS Science Building San Jose, CA
1989
Bas-relief oceanic mural 3’x36’
Tutto Mare Restaurant, Newport Beach, CA
1985
Assorted bas-relief murals and sculptures
Guaymas Restaurant, Tiberon, CA
PUBLIC COMMISSIONS
1997
“Bad Boys”
The New Yorker, Full page photo of artwork featured in the February-March issue
PUBLICATIONS
2023
Idea Lounge
Guest speaker PAC, CA
2016-19
Member and Chair
Petaluma Public Art Committee
2007
“Sickness Can Do That to a Man”
Chautauqua Literary Journal Prize for Prose