Kate Rivers constructs of layers of text, ephemera, and oil stick creating dense patterns, while exploring social and political issues. The work addresses the human compulsion to collect things that often adds meaning to our lives reflecting past memories and events. Rivers gathers material from garage or estate sales, and second-hand stores, posters from urban areas, and items from daily life. Some of the materials that she uses are a variety of maps, old typed or hand-written letters, canceled postage stamps and clothing tags. Clothing tags are especially seductive because they are well designed and suggest issues of class and the compulsion to collect. In addition she incorporates items of whimsy and reflections of the everyday. Often, “I feel like a voyeur looking into the lives of others long past and reflecting on those lives.”