Nurture by Nature is an exciting new force, and it comes down to how Kate works. Storytelling runs through everything she does. Her concepts begin with a show name, a curated soundtrack, and a walk in the woods. She spent over a decade in interiors building relationships with makers before the gallery existed, and the relationship with the person still comes before the transaction. Vermont was never a limitation, it’s where she’s from and where her people are. The new space blurs gallery, den, kitchen, and design studio so you can see a piece on the wall and then sit with it in something closer to a home. She calls it an invitation to walk inside her mind, and we’d take that invitation anywhere.

Show Me to Me opens Saturday, October 3 with a reception from 5 to 8pm and runs through December 5.

Read the full interview with Kate below, and find this and more on our calendar.

You’ve built Nurture by Nature into a home for collectible design in Burlington, far from the usual hubs, and outgrew your first space in under a year. What made you believe this could work in Vermont, and what has the response taught you?

I never really thought of Vermont as a limitation, especially after years of working in a remote place like Jackson Hole, Wyoming. I learned pretty quickly that proximity to a major city doesn’t dictate the possibilities of good design. As an intuitive person, I’m very led by my gut, and I’ve learned not to ignore it. When I knew it was time to come home, I trusted that feeling.

Nurture by Nature grew organically from the way I had already been working for more than a decade: building relationships with makers, discovering work I believed in, and bringing it into my interior architecture and design projects. The gallery became a natural extension of that.

Vermont felt right because it is in my bones. I grew up here, my dearest friends and family are here. The landscape, the materials, the pace, the appreciation for things made by hand are all part of me. But I also wanted to create an exchange between Vermont and the wider creative world. To bring artists and makers here who might not otherwise be seen, and to introduce my clients to work that exists outside the traditional design ecosystem.

The response has been a really beautiful confirmation that I was listening to the right voice when I started this. The gallery is growing because of relationships. Artists I believe in, clients who want to understand how their investment directly impacts lives, makers I want to champion, people who walk through the door and feel something. I trusted my gut enough to begin, and then people started gathering around it. That has been the most meaningful part of all so far.

Show Me to Me pairs each designer’s new work with sentimental personal objects that shaped their creative lives, an idea that came from your own experience of moving. How did that concept take shape, and what have Luke, Jabez, and Jane chosen to show?

My concepts always start with a show name, a curated soundtrack and a walk in the woods.

Show Me to Me started creeping into my mind while I was moving into the new space and thinking about what it means to make room. Physically, creatively, personally. When you move, you have to edit your life a little. What stays? What goes? What deserves room?

But the idea also came very naturally from the way I work with artists and makers. For me, the relationship with the person always comes before the transaction. I want to know who they are, what they care about, what they’re making, and where they’re going. I’m interested in building relationships that can evolve over time, rather than simply bringing work into the gallery and selling it. I have to connect with not only the work but the person behind it.

That’s particularly true with Luke Malaney. I’ve known him since Nurture by Nature’s first exhibition, Unknown Friends, and over time he’s become something closer to family than a collaborator. His work for this show was made here in Vermont last summer, while he and his wife were expecting their first child. He was hand-carving three pieces in a field using salvaged local wood and things he found around the house, even using pencils as tools. Knowing the circumstances around the work changes the way I see it. It becomes a record of that particular place, that summer, and that moment in his life.

Jane Wright connected immediately with the idea of the precious objects. We had conversations about family, nature, loss, and what it means to be creative and human, and those conversations became part of the exhibition. She brought ceramics made by her grandmother, a nineteenth-century needlework book from her family archive, and small collections of sea glass and stones. They reveal this beautiful lineage between family, craft, nature and memory that also exists in her work.

Jabez Bartlett is a newer relationship, and I was drawn to the way memory and the uncanny run through his work. We both believe in the depth of the woods and the importance of ghosts. He brought a photograph from the past, a light meter, a timeworn book, and a 3D-printed flower. They feel almost like fragments of memory themselves, which creates this interesting conversation with the work.

The precious objects became a way of letting us get a little closer to each person. As children, we bring something to school for show-and-tell and explain why it matters to us. As adults, we stop explaining ourselves that way, but we never really stop collecting. We surround ourselves with things that carry memory.

That’s what I wanted to make room for in this exhibition: not just the work the artists make, but the lives they are making it from. The relationships are really the heart of Nurture by Nature.

The new space brings the gallery, your interior design studio, and gathering areas under one roof. How do the two sides of the practice feed each other, and what does this expansion let you do that you couldn’t before?

As a person, I’m more of an introvert, and in the past I’ve sometimes been perceived as mysterious (though my closest friends would laugh at that). The new space opens the doors a little wider. It’s really an invitation to walk inside my mind.

Since opening the gallery last year, I’ve been thinking more about how naturally the gallery and design studio feed each other. They were never really separate in my head. I’m constantly moving between art, furniture, materials, architecture, makers, and the way people live. The new space gives all of those things room to exist together, play and complement each other.

I might discover an artist through the gallery and begin imagining their work in a client’s home. A design project might lead me to a maker, a material, or an idea that eventually becomes part of an exhibition. The gallery gives me a place to live with new work, understand it in context, and introduce it to clients. The design practice creates opportunities for those relationships to grow into commissions and collaborations. It’s always about invitation, tension, play and curiosity for me.

I also wanted the space to feel less like a traditional gallery and more like a place you could actually spend time. There’s the gallery, but also a den, a kitchen, and the design studio. You can see a piece in an exhibition and then encounter it in a more residential context. You can talk about a dining table while sitting at one. The boundaries get a little blurry, which is really how I work.

More than anything, the expansion gives us room for things to happen. Room to gather people, test ideas, live with objects, and let relationships develop. It feels like a much more complete expression of Nurture by Nature, and a chance to let people a little further into the way I see things.

What’s ahead for Nurture by Nature? What do you hope the gallery becomes for Burlington and for the designers you work with?

What I hope for the future is to continue building a roster of artists and makers whose work I really believe in, and to grow alongside them. I want Nurture by Nature to be a place where their work can be introduced, lived with, placed in context, and ultimately find its way into homes and projects. Sometimes that might mean a gallery exhibition, sometimes a commission, sometimes a long-term relationship that neither of us could have predicted at the beginning.

For Burlington, I’d love for the gallery to become a place where people can encounter artists, designers, and ideas they might not otherwise encounter here. I want there to be a constant exchange with the wider creative world, the taste and talent is here in Vermont.

I want to keep making room for good people, good work, and the relationships that develop around them. To build a roster that becomes increasingly meaningful to my architectural and interior design projects, and to create a place where these makers can actually make, experience Vermont, collaborate, and become part of the larger ecosystem we’re building.


Photos by Joseph Kramm