You can tell she is an artist.
But it is not that she's clothed all in black in or discusses the newly anointed prince of the New York art clique; it is just that Kate Shortridge '96 has paint all over her pants, jacket and backpack.
"I always bring the remnants of being an artist home with me," she said while walking across the Green yesterday afternoon. "I am always covered in paint or charcoal."
For Shortridge, art is not just a hobby.
"I don't feel grounded if I don't go into the studio once a day," she said yesterday. "Otherwise I feel lost."
She's taken classes in drawing, painting, and sculpture, and is currently working on clay and wax sculptures for a class.
Shortridge said she likes all mediums of art -- some more than others -- and is willing to experiment in them.
"Sculpture is a different way of seeing things," she said.
Attacking the canvas
Shortridge said she "attacks" the canvas when she is drawing and painting.
"I will go through the paper," the Kansas native said. "I do really big work. It is a great release physically, emotionally and mentally."
"Art is just a natural extension of me," she said. "I am a very physical painter and drawer."
In her abstract work you can see this energy release in marks in the pages where she pressed a little too hard.
Leslie Jennings '96, Shortridge's roommate since Freshman year, said Shortridge is intense and spends a lot of time in the studio working.
"She's a freak in her own little way," she said.
In a way she is addicted to art.
"I never thought of myself as an artist or associated with the art world ..." Shortridge said. "But I have grown to accept it. I keep going. I cannot imaging a term with out it."
Lots of work
She said being in the studio takes a lot of time and commitment.
"I hardly ever see her," Jennings said. "She is married to her work."
Shortridge said she quit the women's volleyball team midway through the spring season because she did not have the energy.
While when she came to Dartmouth she tried to deny the fact that she was an artist, she said her quitting the team was "an acceptance that art is a part of me."
When she takes her off-term this fall, she will be in New York City taking classes at the New York Studio School of Painting, Sculpture and Drawing.
'It's not finished'
Shortridge says she is rarely happy with her works and tries hard to complete them. Even she readily admits, she is not sure what "completing" them means.
"I rarely put anything up on the wall," she said. "I don't like to look at my own work."
Balancing herself on top of a sink counter to reach her work stacked atop the adjacent lockers in a Hopkins Center arts studio, she found the work she was willing to show.
The expression on her face as she unfolded her large charcoal and paint abstract work demonstrated her hesitancy.
"It's not finished," she added as an afterthought.
Because of the sheer number of paintings Shortridge produces, she said she occasionally is not able to finish the pieces.
"It's really hard finishing things," she said. "It is really hard to make the final decision. It is scary to be done with something that you have put a lot of the time and effort into."
Even those works she cannot complete, she keeps.
This is clearly evident when Shortridge takes you around to see her art stored in the Hop. Walking from studio to studio, from to room, her work is everywhere.
She even joked that her rooms are full and that other pieces of art are "stored in places they probably shouldn't be."
Her unfinished work is invaluable because they are examples of the different stages she has gone through as an artist, she said.
Shortridge, who said she does not like sculpture as much as painting or drawing, said she is occasionally frustrated by her inability to produce the work she envisions.
"It is stretching me," she said. "It's frustrating."
True liberal arts education
Besides being an artist, Shortridge said she has found inspiration in the sciences.
"I can pick and choose from the rest of the disciplines. It jogs your mind," she said of her courses. "It makes you think about patterns."
Last year, Shortridge brought home a set of dead insects from the biology department so she could draw them.
"Kate did this drawing of a dragon fly and hung it over her bed," Jennings said. "It was huge ... eight by six ... and of course my bed was perpendicular to hers and I got to see it every time I woke up."
Shortridge said with a smile that she does not hang many of her pictures up in her dorm room because it scares her roommates.
But she said she likes sharing her works with others. "It's all so personal to me," she said.
