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Artist Statement

Kristine is the youngest of five daughters, born to Harriet and Walter Souder. Her mother was an art teacher and a prolific artist. She has been a strong influence on Kristine as an artist. She lived and breathed art and made a game out of quizzing her girls on artists and art movements. Her mother refused to have coloring books in the home, instead encouraging the girls to observe nature and draw what they saw, and never to copy from others.

In school, Kristine favored her art classes. She first fell in love with clay as an art medium while creating a ninth grade art project. She took a number of high school art classes from Julia Crew who was an exceptional ceramics teacher. She also had a major influence on Kristine’s work. She attended the University of Iowa, receiving a Bachelor of Arts degree in art education with 12 undergraduate hours in ceramics. These classes included hand-building, throwing on the wheel, glaze formulation and Raku.

Kristine prefers hand-building and sculpture techniques over wheel throwing, feeling more control of the clay and creating more unique forms. She is intrigued with the Raku process and the effects that it produces on the clay.

Kristine has also taught art at all three levels: elementary, middle-school and high school in a number of different states, including Iowa, Illinois, and Colorado. She enjoyed teaching art, but found it exhausting, leaving little time and energy to do her own art work. In 2013, when her mother moved to Fort Madison, Kristine moved in with her to be closer to family and lower her cost of living. When her mother added on to her home, it created a space that Kristine was able to make into a ceramics studio, which had been a lifelong dream. It has also allowed her to create a body of work that she could present in a one person show, fulfilling another dream. Kristine finds working with clay very therapeutic. She loves the feel of the clay, the earthiness of it and the textures that can be created with it.