Meet Kat Jacobs

Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Kat Jacobs. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Kat, we’re thrilled to have you sharing your thoughts and lessons with our community. So, for folks who are at a stage in their life or career where they are trying to be more resilient, can you share where you get your resilience from?

In my mind, it is a classic tale of David and Goliath. As a child, from an outside perspective, I was born into privilege with all my basic needs being comfortably met. I was given a top tier education, and I was a young person that was well liked by her friends and loved by her family. I was cared for and mentored by many wonderful adults. I felt the presence of joy, often, and I made meaningful memories with all who loved me. However, like many, there was a shadow side to my happy childhood. At a young age, my life at home became unpredictable and unstable as my mother fell under the cast of grave mental illness. Delusional disorder became her ongoing battle, and ours. Her struggle with mental illness left me feeling, at times, insecure and frightened, for her and the stability of our family. Understand, she is a loving mother, I do believe, did the best she could given the demons she constantly had to battle. And Dad did all he could to retain a semblance of innocent childhood and happy home, but this war waged against him too. Anyone, and there are many of us, who loves someone with debilitating mental illness knows how deep those scars can run and the dysfunctional ways in which that experience with love can alter the course of our lives. From a young age, I had the odds stacked against me, and I lost years of my life processing and mourning that loss – for better or worse… However, I am an avid believer in silver linings. Often entangled with my Mother’s happiness and safety I became a care-giver at a young age. And at a young age, I developed an understanding of the many ways humans can falter, and I empathized – a foundation of patience and sympathy, unconditional love and human understanding. It took many years to “get over” the loss of a “normal” childhood and although that sadness could have destroyed me, I decided instead to give it grace and now I look at it all as the source my greatest strength and resilience. Despite the odds we faced, our family has changed and beautifully grown yet remained bonded. And I still care of my Mother, but that care has changed too. She now grapples with the later stages of dementia, and despite the unique grief this newer disease also carries, it too has a silver lining offering Mom and I a period of more peaceful connection. My resilience comes from my early and ongoing experience with loss and from those who didn’t give up on me.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?

Focusing on what was next for me after graduating high school, did not come easily. It took a few years of self discovery and healing before I was ready to embark upon finding my passions and purpose. I was particularly drawn to learning more about the human brain for a better understanding of my own experiences. And my natural inclinations towards mentoring and healing after years of innate practice lead me to want to pursue the helping professions in psychology. The natural world, and its bountiful well, opened up to me in my early adulthood and so I selected a program at Appalachian State University, in the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains, to pursue that path. I became deeply moved and influenced by Appalachian culture during my years there as well – the lifestyle, folklore, connection to the earth and rooted musical expressions. It still continues to inspire much of my work today. Eventually my love for Baltimore and my family drew me back and I went on to work in a clinical psychiatric setting here at home followed by over a decade of supporting women and families through the journey of childbirth as a birth doula.
So how do I find myself embedded in the world of the arts now? I began studying art in various media as a young child – both in private studio settings and eventually taking classes with the Maryland Institute of Art during my middle and high school years. My art was always an outlet. I loved my work as a birth doula, but the consistently “on call” nature of the profession became difficult when my partner and I decided we wanted to build a family of our own. My partner, also an artist, travels a great deal of the year, and with the birth of our children, my profession in birth work, began to be a challenge. At the same time, I was being called towards some other manifestation of work. A body of work. Something more interpretive, more abstract and exploratory that encompassed all of my life’s experiences up until the moment I became a mother myself. I was drawn back to my art. And I built a palate upon the forages I would find during my time spent outdoors, and a canvas of brilliant natural wool and animal based textiles those tactile nature was comforting and cathartic during those early years of new motherhood. That would then culminate into my own personal style within the fiber arts, which I have been curating for the past 8 years now. As I work up in our home’s loft studio, I am often ruminating upon the human experience and our entanglement with the natural world. I believe those sentiments then work themselves through whatever piece it is I am working on, and it is my hope a piece of that translates to the collector.

It is important to me that the peace I obtain in the creation of my work is cyclical. Therefore all of the animal based materials used in my pieces are both ethically sourced and cruelty-free. All of the wool based textiles come from companies with the highest level of ethics in sheep husbandry and every feather is naturally molted and collected – a reincarnation of the beauty that has freely been let go of…

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

Let your weakness be your strength. I owe a lot of my patience, openness and empathy to my struggle. As long as I continue to do the work, my experiences will humble my existence and make my life and relationships with others richer and fuller and this in turn makes me an artist. We depend on our artists to go to the dark places and report back.

I still feel like I have a newborn with my art, but I do know that you must create fearlessly and true to your own personal taste, unaffected by trends or external output, to love it and make others feel it too.

And lastly, take time in your practice to walk away, move your body and reconnect in the natural world through various means whenever you are feeling stuck – there is no greater well.

Who has been most helpful in helping you overcome challenges or build and develop the essential skills, qualities or knowledge you needed to be successful?

My husband will forever be my greatest muse.
Some days being two artists working from home, isolated from the rest of the busied professional dog eat dog world, raising a family with inconsistency as our baseline can be like frantically walking on a steep ledge. But I will never forget the first time I heard him sing, his soul almost tangible, and I believed him and the power his art had and how impactful that art can be on the lives of others. Despite our illusions of autonomy, we are not at it alone. Quite the contrary, we depend upon each other a great deal and so there is purpose in just creating beauty that helps others heal and feel empowered – he reinspired me to own that in myself and continues to encourage my confidence to do so. And when I self-doubt, he steps up and vice versa. Everything about the way his kind heart does life is pretty inspiring.

Contact Info:

• Website: http://www.KatJacobsDesign.com
• Instagram: @feathersandfibers
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/feathersandfibers/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katjacobsdesign/

Image Credits

Top two portrait photos at by Kady Dulny @kdimaging
All of other art photos are done by me.