Evanston, Illinois based graphic designer and artist.

Kate Friedman grew up in Evanston and received a degree in cultural history and studio art from Earlham College. From the mid-1970s to 1982, she was a production assistant at the Chicago Reader and later served as art director from 1994 to 1996. In 1982, she started Kate Friedman Design. Later in her career, Friedman shifted from client-based work to developing her own vision as an artist. One of her final projects was “Reading the Landscape” at Fort Sheridan Openlands Lakeshore Preserve in Highland Park.

Friedman’s artist statement was: “My work explores the interface of nature and technology, using digital tools and industrial materials in combination with photography, painting, drawing and collage. Variations in scale reveal recursive patterns, referencing visible structures in nature, macroscopic or microscopic views of the body or the planet, or complex data visualization in medicine, topography or computing.”

“Abstract and intricate, the paintings and installations are open to personal interpretation. Each viewer brings one’s own history to the piece and can read one’s own experiences there, recognizing visual patterns - maps, branches, medical scans - as well as biological, cosmic, or data systems.”

My work seeks a common language: of order and complexity, the organic and the built, the rational and the intuitive, the mark of the hand and the mark of the machine - a shared presence in the world...around us and inside us.” [Accessed from http://www.katefriedman.com/Statement2.html, January 2024]