Kate Jaffe is an educator, weaver, sheep-shearer, quilter, flower gardener, daughter, friend, and partner. Her material practice centers around cloth-making and basket weaving from local materials such as: wool, tule, willow, English ivy, nettle, redwood bark, and Japanese indigo from her garden. Kate is the founding Director of Santa Cruz KIN (Kids in Nature), est. 2013, a grassroots, land-based education program which teaches elementary students about the natural and cultural histories of Santa Cruz, alongside social and emotional learning and skill building.
Her hobbies include: medicine making, book making, drinking tea, boiling dye mushrooms, gathering natural pigments, bicycle touring and repair, laughing, watching birds, holding newts, saving seeds, sitting close to dogs, and eating persimmons. She believes fundamentally and whole-heartedly that thoughtful/radical pedagogy is a capital “A” Art, and as such centers education in all of her work with the hopes of affecting much needed change and repair for the land and its many vivacious inhabitants.