Visual Artist

Kathy Strauss is a working artist, scientist, and mother living in Baltimore. She earned her degree in Art from Westminster College (Pennsylvania) and has been making and exhibiting both fiber art and works on paper for over 40 years. She has shown work in many Baltimore area venues including Maryland Art Place, the Creative Alliance, and at Baltimore's annusal arts festival ArtScape. She has also exhibited work in Pittsburgh, Washington, DC and New York. Her work has been included in textbooks (Gateways to Art, Understanding the Visual Arts) and publications (Link, A Critical Journal on the Arts in Baltimore and the World), and is in permanent collections (including Institute for Genome Sciences, Notre Dame of Maryland University, both in Baltimore, MD). She has worked with the staff at the Baltimore Museum of Art in Baltimore, and the Textile Museum in Washington, DC demonstrating and lecturing on fiber art techniques.

Additionally, her work as an artist and scientist was featured – along with others from UMB Center for Vaccine Development working on the vaccines for Covid-19 – in a Rolling Stone article published October 2020.

Kathy Strauss has also published an article as first author in Clinical Biochemistry on analysis of transferrin in human serum, as well as other articles as supporting author.

Artist Statement

Working in both science and art as I do (and have done for 30 years) I have a continuous urge to peer beneath the surface of things. Quilts I’ve made in previous years imposed grid-like patterns on natural images, almost classifying or quantitating. My work of recent years, however, has been constructing batik sculptures of silk gauze layers, and creating layered monotypes that include solved calculus problems that relate to the printed image(s). The work was best described by Jed Dodds, Visual Arts Director of the Creative Alliance (Baltimore MD) for the “Subsurface” exhibit, October 2002:

“The urge to peer below the surface of things is at the root of all intellectual inquiry. We look under the hood, dig deep, peer within – all our attempts to understand the nature of things. Artists understand this, as do scientists….When one lift the veils, one must be prepared to see what’s beneath….Kathy Strauss constructs diaphanous batik sculptures which begin with the idea of scientific inquiry, but raise the emotional ante….Searching for clues, the viewer plays the role of archeologist, digging below the surface to confront not just the abstract story of an ancient culture or complex organism, but of individuals who stood the same ground as they.”