Born and
raised in Philly, Kate McCabe made her way to California to study
under former Disney animator Jules Engle (Fantasia), at
CalArts.
Looking for a California sound for a film she was
creating, Kate approached Brant Bjork from the southern California
desert music scene. Once he saw her completed project, ‘Milk and
Honey’, he asked her to come to the desert and make a visual album
for him. Besides cross-country road trips, this would be Kate’s
first real experience with the desert.
Just
prior to coming out to work on Brant’s project (‘Sabbia’), Kate was
looking to purchase a home in her native Philadelphia. While she
was here, Kate experienced a desert snow – and the Milky Way. Now
she would be looking for a home in the desert – that was
2005.
Not
long after settling into her new desert home, Kate took a financial
hit from an employer who did not honor her contract. Needing to
keep money coming in, she got jobs, started painting and created
‘Kidnap Yourself’ as an artist’s collective at her home, providing
space for other artists to flex their creativity in a desert
setting.
In
this episode, Kate talks about the ways she found to be creative
during this time. With no funding for film making and limited
supplies to create other art, Kate picked up a pen and began
writing her observations of the desert and the weather, which lead
to her create and publish ‘Mojave Weather Diaries’, a collection of
desert observations and sketches.
Then
she stumbled on a book by a female homesteader who lived in Yucca
Valley in the 1930’s. June LeMert Paxton’s book, ‘My Life on the
Mojave’ chronicles her life in the hi-desert. Reading the book,
Kate felt a kinship with this woman who, for health reasons, left
her family in Pasadena to make a life in the desert for her
well-being. In her book, June describes the balance of
self-reliance and required relationships with other homesteaders
for survival. Kate compares the walkable communities of the east
coast with the driving requirements of the desert and how that
changes one’s ability to connect with their neighbors.
Kate
earned her MFA in Experimental Animation from CalArts. She teaches
film at UC San Diego and CalArts. Her current work includes
painting, photography and diaries.
During the pandemic, Kate worked on a sunrise/sunset
time lapse film that will be shown at the July 17, 2021, benefit
concert for The Desert Institute. The film will open the evening,
which features local desert rockers Yawning Man.
Connect with Kate and watch her films: