Kathryn Spence lives and works in San Francisco, California and received her MFA from Mills College in 1993. Spence combines sculptural objects with drawing and installation. Her work exposes a dislocation between nature and the artifice of culture and consumerism. She is an avid birder, gardener, and naturalist.

Spence has exhibited nationally and internationally including the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, CT; Mills College Art Museum, Oakland, CA; the Johnson Museum at Cornell University, Ithaca, NY; the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, MO; 2005 Corcoran Biennial, Washington D.C.; The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Israel; SFMOMA, San Francisco, CA; Mass College of Art, Boston, MA; the Orange County Museum, Newport Beach, CA; Torch Gallery, Amsterdam; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, CA; San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose, CA; and the Oakland Museum of California, Oakland, CA.

She has received numerous awards such as the Eureka Fellowship, the Fleischhacker Foundation award, and an Anonymous Was a Woman award. Selected public collections include SFMOMA, the de Young, the Oakland Museum of California, the San Jose Museum, the Denver Art Museum, the Birmingham Museum of Art, and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art.