Artist Statement

What deserves to be preserved?

History remembers monuments, monarchs, and masterpieces. Yet cultures are equally shaped by the objects, rituals, language, and symbols of everyday life. These are the things we celebrate with, wear, play with, gather around, and pass from one generation to the next until they quietly become part of our shared cultural memory.

My work explores how cultures assign value and what they ultimately choose to preserve.

Working in plaster using traditional mold-making and casting techniques, I pair the enduring forms of classical sculpture with the symbolic language of contemporary life. Traffic cones, birthday cakes, toys, flowers, fashion, slogans, and other familiar cultural symbols are brought into conversation with historical figures, inviting viewers to reconsider what deserves permanence and why.

Humor provides the first point of entry into my work, but curiosity is its destination. By collapsing the distance between the monumental and the familiar, I hope to encourage a broader conversation about how cultural meaning is constructed—not only through museums and monuments, but through the ordinary symbols and rituals that define each generation.

Rather than offering answers, my sculptures ask viewers to consider what future generations might understand about us through the things we choose to celebrate, elevate, and preserve.

Biography

CP KATE (Kate Rasmussen) is a contemporary sculptor whose work explores how cultures assign value and what they ultimately choose to preserve.

Pairing the enduring forms of classical sculpture with the symbolic language of contemporary life, Rasmussen examines the relationship between history, cultural memory, and the everyday symbols that quietly define an era. Her sculptures bring together historical figures with objects associated with celebration, ritual, fashion, childhood, and popular culture, questioning the values societies elevate and the stories they choose to carry forward.

Working in plaster using traditional mold-making and casting techniques, Rasmussen creates sculptures that are at once playful and contemplative. Humor provides the first point of entry into her work, but curiosity is its destination, inviting viewers to reconsider how cultural significance is constructed and what, ultimately, deserves to be remembered.

A self-taught sculptor, Rasmussen left a successful career in the technology industry to pursue her artistic practice. She lives and works in Portland, Oregon.

Follow Kate on Instagram @cpkatemaker