Description
Katherine Westphal was a textile designer and professor of design at the University of California, Davis. Born in 1919 in Los Angeles, she received a B.A. and M.F.A. in art history from UC Berkeley. Westphal worked as a freelance textile designer from 1950 to 1958, pioneering new avenues of textile printing and image generation. She taught at the University of Wyoming and the University of Washington before becoming a tenured faculty member at UC Davis in 1968. Westphal became a full professor in 1975 and retired in 1979, honored as Professor Emeritus. Additionally, she received the 2009 Gold Medal for Consummate Craftsmanship from the American Craft Council. In this interview, Westphal discusses the art education at UC Berkeley, her marriage to Ed Rossbach, design classes at UC Davis, and the future of textile art.