For a couple of years she tended bar, using the proceeds to fund long trips to the south of Spain. Returning from one trip with just four pesetas in her pocket, she accepted an opportunity to become a substitute Chemistry and Physics teacher at her old high school: a position that was fraught with irony, given McGloughlin’s reputation as a “wild kid” in her student days. She discovered that she loved teaching. Later she became assistant director at the Woodstock Youth Center, using “an old tractor garage, which was hot in the summer, cold in winter and flooded in spring” as a studio.
A big change occurred in the winter of 1991: McGloughlin signed up for four classes with Robert Angeloch at the Woodstock School of Art (WSA) – and ended up never leaving. “I immersed myself in artmaking,” she said. When her money ran out, she got a full-time scholarship and worked at the school as a janitor. One summer, she squatted in a chicken coop-turned-storage-room on the property, setting up a bed and fan in the rough space and using the outdoor shower.
Angeloch also ran a gallery in Woodstock, where McGloughlin had her first solo show. Later she showed her work at the Coffey Gallery, in Uptown Kingston, switching to a gallery in Beacon after the Coffey Gallery closed, where she had “two sellout shows and three great shows” before that gallery also closed. She now shows her work in five galleries in the Northeast, two of which are in Maine.
Today she works out of a glass-walled studio that she had built on her property in 2000 and lives in the old farmhouse, which she inherited from her grandparents. With the passing of her mother, it “became real to me that this is the end of the line, of something going on for a long time.” Painting the barns is a way of holding on to that connection, of not letting a history entirely fade away.
Kate McGloughlin’s Scott Farm II.
McGloughlin’s highly regarded reputation as an artist has created a demand for her workshops at the WSA, many of which are attended by other professional artists. She conducts outdoor landscape painting classes in the summer, but it is in the Printmaking Department that she has really made her mark: The current show of work by members of her Graphic Workshop at the Rosendale Café beautifully epitomizes the variety of media, abundant talent and creative energies that have emerged and flourished under her tutelage.
McGloughlin’s association with WSA is decades-old, ever since she took that first class with the late Robert Angeloch. Under her direction in the past decade, the place has become one of the cultural crown jewels of the region, attracting students from as far away as Connecticut.
She has raised funds for new equipment, such as an exhaust fan and blanket for the press, by holding sales of prints. She has also expanded the class offerings, which include not only the traditional techniques of etching, woodcut and lithography, but also monotype, collograph and other alternative, non-toxic methods, which McGloughlin mastered after attending workshops at the Center for Contemporary Printmaking in Connecticut and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. (She continues to visit these facilities in the summer; it’s an opportunity to work on her own prints and relax afterwards by taking bike trips to the beach. At Provincetown, “I get to work on Robert Motherwell’s press. I’ve just gotten great information in the last five years at these places on different techniques, and I’ve brought everything I learned home, to see how we can be improved.”) McGloughlin said that her next ambition is to add screen-printing, one of the very few printmaking techniques that the WSA doesn’t offer.
But it’s not just the amply equipped facilities that make the WSA print shop, and the school as a whole, such a special resource; it’s also the spirit of camaraderie. “It’s a very welcoming place,” McGloughlin said. “It’s more than a school. It’s a community with a sense of belonging. A lot of artists come not so much for the education as for the mutuality and kinship of being with other artists. Being a visual artist can be very isolating. But if you’re working as a printmaker, you’re collaborating. It’s a great way to exchange ideas and help people. It’s artists supporting each other. People have become good friends.” The shop is also a valuable resource for experienced students, who can use the printmaking facility at the rate of $50 a day for making their own work.
McGloughlin also leads groups on trips abroad each year. The groups have visited Mexico and Italy, and this April will be visiting Spain. She believes that travel is important for “stirring up the neurons and seeing a different strike of light. The last couple of trips, we rented studio space from other printmakers. We’re making artist connections all over the world.”
Besides her teaching and print shop duties and own artmaking, which she manages to squeeze in, McGloughlin also has an administrative role at the WSA, having served as president of the Board of Directors for the past three years. “I have the greatest Board friends,” she said. “We have a phenomenal staff. Finally, I’ve found my niche.”
Artist and teacher Kate McGloughlin, Olivebridge, (845) 594-5932, katemcgloughlin.com, e-mail [email protected].
