Katy Bergman Cassell earned an MFA in Metals/Jewelry/Enameling from Kent State University and a BFA in Enameling from the Cleveland Institute of Art in Ohio. She worked as an archaeological illustrator in India and as a museum educator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Cloisters, in New York, and at the Western Reserve Historical Society in Cleveland, OH, all of which influenced her art. She moved to South Carolina in 2007 to teach metals and enameling the Fine Arts Center in Greenville, SC, where she balances teaching with her studio practice. After earning a doctorate in education from Converse University in Spartanburg in 2022, her dissertation, about the connections between leadership and the practice of visual arts, earned the university’s prestigious Thomas Mickel Dissertation Award.
Enamel’s inexhaustible potential, from installation to jewelry, has held her attention throughout her career. She was awarded a National Artists Teachers Fellowship to travel to England to work with expert British enamelists and tour the enameling archives at the Victoria and Albert Museum. She teaches enameling workshops nationally, has been a South Carolina State Parks Artist-in-Residence, and was on the board of the Center for Enamel Art in Oakland, CA.
She has had nine solo exhibitions, most recently at the Crutchfield Gallery in the Spartanburg (SC) Main Library and at the Mesa Contemporary Arts Museum in Mesa, AZ. She has exhibited her work in Taipei, Taiwan, as part of the Blaze International Enameling Exhibition and at the Morris Museum of Art in Augusta, GA. Her artwork has been published on web and postcard promotional material for the Society of North American Goldsmith’s Exhibition in Motion, and the Richmond Art Center’s Place as Landscape exhibition. Books and other publications include The Art of Enameling, 500 Enameled Objects, Metalsmith magazine, Cleveland Scene, At Home in the Upstate, and The Greenville News.
Follow on instagram: @katycassell
