Begin Again by Kate Asche

“Begin Again”
Mixed Media

Begin Again by Kate Asche
Kate Asche paints encaustic works mixing media, collage and sometimes found objects. The encaustic process attracted her for a decade before she began painting in September 2022. During an ekphrastic poetry workshop taught by Susan Kelly-DeWitt, Kate found herself compelled to paint pieces in response to poems she was writing and to write new poems in response to the paintings.

This mutual cycle of birthing grew out of Kate's interior journey of healing from the loss of her first pregnancy while embarking on her second (which--spoiler alert!--ended with the safe arrival of her treasured daughter). The multimedia project is represented in a full-color chapbook currently under submission to literary presses, and Kate also gives readings of the poems alongside the hung paintings in local art spaces.

Kate discovered the first incarnation of her visual language in mixed-media pieces incorporating image transfer, oil pastels and metallic pigments to explore female anatomy and physiology, the reproductive process, geography, and the natural world”especially the American River. Kate's visual vocabulary is expanding as she plays with abstraction and associative collage through additional materials (found natural materials, inks and metal leaf) and processes (including lighting materials on fire and building more layers).

Kate is well known in the region for her poetry, which has appeared in top national literary journals including POETRY Magazine, DIAGRAM, Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly and The Missouri Review. She won POETRY's 2024 Editors Prize for Visual Poetry. Her chapbook, Our Day in the Labyrinth, was published by Finishing Line Press. A graduate of the UC Davis Creative Writing program, she teaches workshops in Sacramento and volunteers in the literary community. www.kateasche.com.”—Kate Asche