Kate O'Brien is an intra-disciplinary artist based in Manchester, UK. Trained in a broad swath of textile practices, she draws on these to playfully explore how materials make action and how action makes materials. Kate is currently working on a PhD at the Manchester Metropolitan University, where she studies how artist-weavers work topologically and, in particular, how technical interventions into the loom generate new material and conceptual forms.
Kate holds a BA from Yale University and BFA from Maryland Institute College of Art. She is an experienced art and mathematics educator and has taught in interdisciplinary classrooms and workshop spaces across the USA, including: Haystack Mountain School of Craft (ME), Peabody School of Dance (MD), Carnegie Mellon's Wats:On? Festival (PA) and the Textile Arts Center (NY). Kate helps to coordinate MOVE MOVE COLLABORATIVE, a 10-day dance and movement intensive held annually in Baltimore, MD. She is also half of WEAVETHING, a interdisciplinary project for thinking and making mathematics and weaving together.