Kate Westfall

Born and raised in the scenic countryside of Rochester, New York, Kate strives to create beautiful objects with images reminiscent of the idyllic setting of her youth. Kate tried working with clay for the first time in her Sophmore year in college and changed concentrations from painting to ceramics immediately. In May of 2012, Kate graduated from Alfred University with a BFA in Ceramics. Upon graduation, she moved to Richmond to study as a Post-Baccalaureate student at Virginia Commonwealth University before continuing on to the DC area to realize her dream of developing Heirloom Pottery Studios.

Developing her work, Kate collects artifacts of the people, places, and events that hold her roots. Her inspiration began with the experience of looking through boxes of unsorted ancestral photographs in her grandparents’ attic. She found that she would like people to have this same sense of discovery, wonder and awareness of time as they use her pieces. The intimacy of ceramic wares readily offers a platform from which to examine how we retain memories and recreate stories from their fragments.