Chicago based artist and Dabble teacher Katie Netti is the owner of Urban Oil Ceramics right here in the Logan Square neighborhood of Chicago.

Katie grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio and spent summers on the family farm in Tennessee. She has always been an outdoor person, enjoying the likes of camping, fishing and all kinds of exploring. She’s drawn to and inspired by nature, plants, insects, animals and particularly birds. Her parents gifted her mother’s old art easel when she was just three years old and her family decided that from there on out, she was an artist!

Katie attended Rochester Institute of Technology where she received her BFA in Glass, and Master of Studies in Art Education. She balances her love of art with teaching and when she’s not manning ship at Urban Oil Ceramics, she teaches public high school which she has been doing for 10 years.

About five years ago, Katie slowly started to turn her apartment in Logan square into an art studio and gallery. Today, it’s fully equipped to work with metals, ceramics, jewelry, book binding and has the capacity to be a working space for 12 people. Katie loves hosting fellow makers and is able to offer them virtually any art tool they could need for projects (she’s a good friend to have, if we do say so ourselves).

Lima and Fluffy, her farm cats from Tennessee, especially love her art endeavors and all of the attention they get from visitors in their home studio!
Katie loves to work with a variety of 2-D and 3-D materials, but is most inspired by functional objects. She tends to collect all sorts of things, and these found and natural objects usually end up in her work and creations.

Last year, Katie began working in the Taxidermy department at the Chicago Academy of Sciences and Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum. Working with animal skins and manikin forms came naturally and is now a new focus for her work.