Cate Watkinson
BiographyCate trained in 3-D Design, Glass with Ceramics at Sunderland Polytechnic.
After leaving college Cate worked in Cambridge and the Channel Islands before returning to the North East to set up her architectural glass studio. Cate continues to run her business, Watkinson Glass Associates, while teaching part time at the University of Sunderland.
Cate designs and makes architectural glass to commission. This ranges from decorative glass panels for private buildings, etched glass screens for offices, to street furniture and major public sculpture commissions.
Research Interests
Over the years Cate has built on her experience, optimising developments in new technologies, including new developments and techniques in construction. Alongside her teaching, her time is now taken up with designing large scale glass work for the public realm. Her research interests lie in the relationships between glass and the environment and ways of placing glass into the environment and the exploration of practice research around several interrelated themes: Light, environments and processes.
Research Activities
Research activities include developing a project that explores the potential of the use of photovoltaic cells in public art, as begun in a Technology Strategy Board grant awarded project in 2009, investigating the use of photovoltaics in public seating.
Following on from Research Pairings collaboration with Clinton Cahill, Senior Lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University, this new research, explores how to use photovoltaic cells and other glass and light possibilities. The collaboration is working towards the creation of potentially 'nomadic' pieces, testing types of light and lighting, different environments and a range of processes. It is hoped to bring the culmination of this collaborative work to the annual Mildura Palimpsest event in Northern Victoria, Australia. Currently the expectation is to exhibit in Palimpsest 2012.
Other research activities include exploring the use of text and light through the public art commission entitled `Total Policing', a glass and stainless steel sculpture situated at the front of the new head quarters for Northumbria Police in North Tyneside.