Kate Blacklock: Inside Out Exhibition

Kate Blacklock: Inside Out Exhibition
On view in the gallery at the WaterFire Arts Center
Thursday, June 5 – Sunday, July 6, 2025
Opening Reception: Thursday, June 5, 6:00–8:00 p.m.

In Inside Out, a solo exhibition by Providence-based artist Kate Blacklock, large-scale narrative paintings transform interior and exterior settings into dreamlike stages where memory, relationship, and time blur and intertwine. Animals and symbolic objects intrude upon these spaces, layering each scene with surreal, emotional resonance and visual mystery.

Blacklock begins each work with a digitally collaged photograph—an evolving foundation altered throughout her creative process. Some elements are drawn from observation, others are invented or generated through AI, resulting in uncanny compositions that inhabit a liminal space between the real and imagined, the past and the present.

Inside Out is a meditation on perception, transformation, and storytelling. Through her richly layered visual language, Blacklock invites viewers to step into her constructed worlds, where what’s seen is never quite fixed and meaning emerges through reflection.

The exhibition is on view in the WaterFire Arts Center gallery from Thursday, June 5 through Sunday, July 6, 2025, with an opening reception on Thursday, June 5 from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. The third Thursday of the month, June 19, is Gallery Night Providence, when the WFAC gallery, along with other art spaces in the city, will be open late with trolley tours available. On Thursday, June 26, from 6:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m., visitors are invited to return to the gallery for an artist talk with Kate Blacklock, who will speak about her exhibited series Inside Out, the origins of this body of work, and the evolution of her artistic practice.

The WaterFire Arts Center store + gallery hours are Wednesday through Sunday, 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. and Thursday until 9:00 p.m. Admission is free and open to all; donations are encouraged.

ARTIST BIO

Kate Blacklock is a Providence based artist who received her undergraduate degree from University of California at Santa Cruz and her MFA from The Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). She has taught at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Rhode Island College and for nine years co-chaired the Ceramics Department at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, where she was Associate Professor. She has been teaching in the Industrial Design Department at RISD since 2002.

Blacklock’s studio practice has spanned over thirty five years and during that time her work has moved from sculptural and functional ceramics to 3D printing, photography and painting.  She has had solo exhibitions around the country including, New Orleans, New York City, Philadelphia, Providence and Ann Arbor. Her works are in many private and public collections including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Mint Museum, The Fuller Museum and the RISD Museum.

kateblacklock.com
@kate.blacklock

Kate Blacklock was featured in the 2011–2012 NetWorks Rhode Island catalogue. Initiated in 2008 by Rhode Island arts patron Dr. Joseph A. Chazan and concluding in 2016, NetWorks Rhode Island was a visual arts documentary project that profiled more than 100 Rhode Island-based artists, highlighting the richness and diversity of the state’s professional arts community.

Blacklock’s work was included in NetWorks Rhode Island and the Chazan Collection: A Half-Century of RI Artistic Patronage, a large-scale exhibition held at the WaterFire Arts Center in summer 2024. The upcoming exhibition, Growing the NetWorks (July 10–August 31, 2025), will feature over 60 Rhode Island-based artists nominated by the original NetWorks participants.