Kate Cheney Chappell - A Short Biography

Kate Cheney Chappell was born Katherine Pope Cheney in Hartford, Connecticut, the daughter of George Wells Cheney, Jr., an insurance executive, and Mary Frances Pope, a trained artist and champion of the visually impaired. She spent her childhood in Manchester, close to her paternal grandparents, many cousins, and the family business, Cheney Silk. At the age of 12, she and her family moved to Farmington, Connecticut, and she entered the Oxford School for Girls (later Kingswood-Oxford School). With encouragement from Art teacher, Rebecca Jones, she entered and won a Gold Key in Connecticut's Scholastic Art Competition, and was in her first show at age 14. She attended Chatham College in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (now Chatham University), distinguishing herself in Art, Creative Writing and French Literature. She co-founded an alternative drama group that wrote and performed original plays, and was co-editor of the Yearbook. She spent her Junior Year in Paris with the Sarah Lawrence College program, studying painting, drawing, and etching at L'Atelier Goetz, literature at the Sorbonne, and poetry translation with Ives Bonnefoy, a French poet and translator of Shakespeare.

Ms. Cheney married Thomas M. Chappell in 1966, and moved to Maine in 1968, where the two co-founded Tom's of Maine, maker of today's leading natural toothpaste and pioneer in environmental, social, and fiscal responsibility. They raised five children in Kennebunk, and helped start an alternative school, where Ms. Chappell taught art and reading. In 1980, Ms. Chappell returned to finish her college degree at the University of Southern Maine, where she graduated in 1983, summa cum laude. She began having shows of her watercolor landscapes in the Portland area, and later moved to Monhegan Island, to join the art community there. In the 1990's she attended the Charles River Studio Workshop in Cambridge, MA. Continuing studies at Maine College of Art, USM, and Haystack (Deer Isle ME) revived her interest in Printmaking and mixed media work. She joined Peregrine Press, a fine arts co-operative in Portland, showing with that group of 30 artists as well as regular representation at Mast Cove Gallery in Kennebunkport, and the Lupine Gallery on Monhegan. Of Ms. Chappell's solo exhibit at the Round Top Center for the Arts (Damariscotta ME), Art New England (2004) praised "her prowess as a printmaker, her willingness to take esthetic risks, and her ability to tap the creative forces of other artists." The New Britain Museum of American Art (New Britain CT) is featuring Kate Cheney Chappell in their NEW/NOW Gallery, from March 7 to May 25, 2008, in a show of installations, monoprints, and 3-dimensional mixed media wall pieces, titled "Inner Terrain."