Kate Schneider

The deep and complex connection she feels to the natural world is the focus of Schneider’s current practice. Photographed around her family’s cottage in Georgian Bay, The Weight of Your Cool Embrace reflects on geological time, the grounding elements of nature, and how the human body and the earth bear different kinds of fragilities.

A person's hand holding a snake skin by a lake, with a cloudy sky in the background.
Person holding a snake skin by a lake with an overcast sky.
A hand holding a stick with a snakeskin on it, with a lake and trees in the background.
Hand holding a snake skin by a lake with trees in the background.
Person holding a stick with a snakeskin over a lake background
Partially submerged arm in water surrounded by intersecting sticks.
Contact sheet with multiple images of a rocky shoreline, grass, and small plants.

  • Untitled from The Weight of Your Cool Embrace, 2020 [sequence of 5]

    Untitled from The Weight of Your Cool Embrace, 2020

    Untitled from The Weight of Your Cool Embrace, 2017

    Process image from The Weight of Your Cool Embrace, 2018

    Untitled from The Weight of Your Cool Embrace, 2020

    Untitled from The Weight of Your Cool Embrace, 2021

​​Kate Schneider (b. 1980, Cleveland, Ohio) is an artist of settler ancestry living in Tkaronto (Toronto). As a life-long resident of the Great Lakes region, her artistic practice considers her personal and ethical relationship to her home and environment during a time of climate crisis.

She has shown works at the Prefix Institute of Contemporary Art (Toronto), Harbourfront Centre (Toronto), SoHo Photo (New York), and published in numerous publications, such as the Women Photographers International Archive (WOPHA). Kate was the 2020 awardee of the John Hartman award from the MacLaren Art Centre in Barrie, Ontario.