K8 Hardy is your not so straight, straight-A feminist punk

Kate grew up in conservative Fort Worth, Texas; the state where “women still understand pretty." I don't really know what that means. Like every other teen in history, she started writing her name in a cool way and so K8 Hardy was born. Yet, she is one of the few people I know who actually still sticks with it well into her 30s. K8 was a rebellious teenager but she also studied her ass off. Not necessarily because she wanted to, she just needed to get out of Texas ASAP. Being smarter than everyone else is apparently the only way. In Fort Worth you can get expelled for a lot of things, like not wearing a bra, or wearing a Born Against shirt with a soldier saluting a coffin. Even having a chain on her wallet got K8 expelled once. Girls were also not allowed to wear cut-off jeans. In reaction to this ridiculous rule, she decided to dress up as rodeo queen, a hippie, you name it. This was the beginning of her huge collection of thrifted gems. At the age of 15 she was still forced to attend Bible school. As if that wasn't enough, she walked in one day and saw the Christmas tree wrapped in American flags. Well that obviously was the moment she said, “That’s it, I'm done!” who can blame her?

After graduating from Smith College, where she studied film and feminist/queer theory, she moved to San Francisco. The city didn't really do it for her, so she moved to NYC. Hardy, as a 22-year-old artist in New York, was struggling to pay her bills. Nothing new there. Luckily she had a friend who knew this fashion photographer, Steven Klein. K8 had no idea who he was (he is actually pretty famous). They were shooting a photograph for the cover of Face and she had to call her friend to ask her what Armani was. But hey, fake it till you make it right?

Besides being well known for her art and her enviable collection of clothes, she is a founding member of some key activist and artists groups. First of all she is a founding member of the queer feminist journal and artist collective LTTR. More recently she co-founded W.A.G.E. (Working Artists and the Greater Economy) an activist group which focuses on regulating the payment of artist fees by nonprofit art institutions. Why is this still necessary? Oh yeah that’s right, because even some of the bigger museums choose to spend their money on anything but the artists.