The Journal Portraits series is inspired by my dad’s medical school journals and by my art school journals. For me, the forced isolation brought on by the pandemic has been filled with introspection, kicked into focus by the mementos of family life--photos of proms, relics of athletic victories, and scrapbooks upon scrapbooks. Memories mundane and monumental, warming and embarrassing, each became magnified under the microscope of quarantine. Where does the mind go when it has nowhere to go but to itself? 

When my dad passed away, I inherited his medical school journals. I flipped through the dog-eared pages filled with cryptic writing and anatomical diagrams, slanted by his left hand. How many drawings had I scribbled in the margins of my own journals I kept while studying art? How many thoughts did I examine between each line? And how many lines did I cross out? The similarities had nowhere to hide. 

With Journal Portraits I connect the two experiences in context with the lives that surrounded them, as captured in photographs, the written word, and translucent fabric. The way we document ourselves can be as fragile and varied as the lives we live, but even so the markings of this documentation take on a material form in our memory that is as detailed as it is iridescent.

Born in the small town of Bridgeport, West Virginia and raised by two busy doctors in a family of three older siblings, a twin brother, and five cats, Kate McCammon learned early on that she had a knack for creating, a passion for art, and endless stacks of sketchbooks to prove it. She took her passion beyond her rural state and went onto earn her BFA in Painting from the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in Baltimore in 2012 and MFA in Studio Art from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) in Philadelphia In 2016. In between and after her educational pursuits, she has been awarded a number of residencies, including the Starry Night Residency Program in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico; the Scuola Internazionale di Grafica in Venice, Italy; and the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, Vermont. Upon earning her Master’s degree, she has been included in a number of group exhibitions including exhibitions at First Street Gallery in New York City, NY; PAFA’s Alumni Gallery in Philadelphia, PA; and at The Art Trust in West Chester, PA; among others. In 2020and 2021 she had solo exhibitions at AUTOMAT Gallery in Philadelphia and Curio. Gallery & Creative Supply in Lancaster, PA. Currently living and working in Philadelphia, sheworks as PAFA’s Academic Coordinator while maintaining her studio practice. With a rooted painter’s mentality, she is currently working on a body of work that hits close to home—a series of fabric collages of familial narratives and portraits inspired by old photographs, albums, and journals.