time,” said Kat Swank, who grew up as the oldest of seven siblings in a small middle American mid-west town.
“I was born in the wrong place and in the wrong
“I wanted to be an artist from a young age. My dad was a cartoonist – not for a living, just for enjoyment,” said Kat. “You didn’t do that where I came from. You worked in factories and got married right out of high school. I knew I had to get out… I just wasn’t sure how to do it.”
Kat said that she wanted to go to college but her family didn’t have the money to send her, so she did what many teens in that situation do: joined the military. Enlisting in the Navy, Kat had found that to be her ticket out and by the luck of the draw, got stationed in Spain and Greece for several years – an assignment that also opened the door for travel to neighboring European countries.
“When I visited the Louvre in Paris, I just sat down and cried,” Kat said. “It was like a dream I didn’t even know I had. As a girl I had wanted to go places and see things, and it just blew me away.”
After her time in the service, Kat found herself back at home in Poplar Grove but this time only long enough to pack up her car and her dog and head to California, where many of her Navy friends hailed from. Once again she wasn’t entirely sure where to go, but settled down along the Central Coast, near one of the state’s top community colleges where she began to pursue an Associate of Arts degree.
“I absolutely loved it,” Kat said. “They have a great arts program with a lot of local University instructors teaching there part-time. It turned me on to so many things, and in my art appreciation courses we took trips to all the big galleries and museums in San Francisco and L.A.”
She said that she loved to draw and paint but in that medium her work “came out as illustrative,” because of what she learned from her Dad. “I didn’t find my niche right away. It’s a process.”
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