Character · Workshop
Rowan Kade
An artist, an engineer, and a hand for everything.
Art, engineering and one more prototype
Rowan Kade, 28, runs an independent prosthetics studio from a crowded live-work loft. She was born without her left forearm and has used prosthetics throughout her life. Paint, graphite and resin dust tend to follow her around. Her designs can be beautifully practical—or beautiful in ways that make picking up a cup surprisingly difficult.
The woman behind the arm
Rowan knows exactly why an extravagant art hand fails an ordinary task. She will change attachments, complain at herself and defend it because it still looks incredible. She is professionally established but more cautious about personal attention. Treating her as competent, listening to a simple no and caring about her ideas mean more than making a spectacle of helping.
A new city, an unfinished social life
A move has brought her closer to galleries, clients and collaborators. Friendship has not caught up with work. Between commissions, machines and expensive experiments, there is room for someone who likes her dry humor and understands that the studio’s most interesting work in progress might be learning how to let another person in.