Short Answer Sunday: Kathleen Kennedy

Meant to elicit quick, intuitive responses, Short Answer Sunday will introduce readers to a wide variety of artists, educators, writers, curators, art enthusiasts and art adjacent individuals whose inclinations I admire. With the intent of getting to know the person behind the artwork as well generating new avenues to artistic discovery, participants may respond with only a few words or an artist’s name, always with the opportunity to elaborate if they wish!

Kathleen Kennedy is an artist, professor and genuinely delightful human who also happens to be one of my colleagues (yes, I’m really very lucky in the colleague department). An expert in jewelry and all things metal, Kathleen’s recent work resembles jewelry, but it is not jewelry. Rather, it expands on the language of jewelry through the modality of sculpture, both subverting and upholding expectations of the jewelers' craft.

Kathleen’s jewelry-inspired objects maintain a devotional attention to touch, labor and precision, while being unorthodox in scale (they are oversized), media (not real gold but Nu Gold, or gold leaf on foam and plaster armatures) and wearability (not wearable). There’s a sense of hope and restraint found in the visual metaphors—hearts (both buoyant and weighty), nets, tethers and clasps abound. Manifestation is one of Kathleen’s pieces that I can’t stop thinking about. Enticed by the subtle variations of the surface textures (I’m just a tad obsessed with neutral warm/cool juxtapositions), it's the question of weight that I return to again and again. The jumbo heart charm feels both hefty and deflated, vulnerable, but also playful, lassoed and suspended slightly askew like a lopsided anchor or a ball and chain.

Kathleen is as passionate and engaging (both as a teacher and a maker) as the generosity of her responses suggest and her Short Answer Sunday is a total banger. For more about Kathleen and her work, go to her website and follow her on Instagram.
xo, Lauren

Name: Kathleen Kennedy
Occupation: Artist & Professor
Astrological data: Cancer Sun, Gemini Moon, Virgo Rising (Cancer Mars, Gemini Venus, Leo Mercury...you know so much about me now).
Hometown: Richmond, VA
Current location: Richmond, VA - a true townie

Other than Instagram, how do you find new-to-you artists?

Pure Luck...word of mouth...conversations with friends...hyperallergic

An artwork that makes you laugh?

I don't know if I can say it always makes me laugh out loud...because sometimes humor can point out sadness...but I do love the work of Lynda Barry and all things from the near sighted monkey.

An artwork that makes you cry?

I 100% cried at the Nick Cave Guggenheim exhibition...partly because of the work and partly because I was seeing it in person....his work really gives me a "I want to see with my hands not my eyes" energy...but that is a major no-no at a museum.

Image Source

Most underrated artist?

all art jewelry needs more love

An artwork that you'd like to live inside for a week?

any juicy piece of jewelry made by Lola Brooks

An artist whose work you can't stop thinking about?

I often can't stop thinking about how perfect the Felix Gonzalez-Torres Perfect Lovers piece is...Whenever I've seen it in real life, the clocks have always been out of sync with one another...which feels like an accurate representation of life...out of step but still together, side by side.

I also can’t stop thinking about Cornelia Parker’s drawing series, specifically the wedding ring drawing…It’s so drool worthy…It uses drawing in both the 2D sense AND in the metalsmithing sense of drawing down wire. In this piece she has taken 2 wedding bands and melted them down in to an ingot, she then mills the ingot out…or rather draws the ingot out, until it is the length of the perimeter of a living room…This gold wire simultaneously symbolizes the love between two people...keeping them together...and the distance of that space between us that inevitably creeps in.

An artwork that feels like a warm hug?

The I love you box by Julianne Schwartz

What's your favorite characteristic in an artwork?

the cared for details that make you come close

Erotic artwork? (editor's note: this is a multiple choice question)

Yes: ✅

What's an artwork that doesn't look like art?

a Karin Sander polished plaster wall...look close or you'll miss it.

What's an artwork that you suspect that you shouldn't like, but you do (guilty pleasure)?

kei trucks

What's an artwork that you secretly hate?

It's not so much of a secret...but that Jeff Koons Pink Panther piece at the Moma...I have dreams about bumping in to it and knocking it over...but then it turns in to a nightmare because the topple off of the pedestal doesn't make it shatter in to 1 million pieces.

Most insane art piece?

Doris Salcedo's Shibboleth at the Tate...especially thinking of the Tate as a body, and that piece as a wound which left a permanent scar in the skin of the floor.

 

Fav monograph or art book?

Tone Vigeland : Schmuck / Jewelry, Objekt / Objects, Skulptur / Sculpture Monograph AND The Quilts of Gees Bend: Masterpieces from a Lost Place Monograph

Fav museum or gallery in your current location?

The Faberge Collection at the VMFA....the enamel and metalwork is drool worthy

Last exhibition you saw irl?

Testimony & Welter @ Reynolds Gallery...but will see Firewood (A love letter to the VCU wood program) at Alma's on Friday! AND (as this is being published) I will be making my way back from LA, where I will have seen the Monuments Exhibit at The Brick and MOCA (I’m also hoping to stop by Craft in America and the Center for Craft…fingers crossed I can hit it all)

 

Kathleen's photos from Testimony at Reynolds Gallery

 

Kathleen's photos from Testimony at Reynolds Gallery

 

Kathleen's photos of Jack Wax's work in welter at Reynolds Gallery

 

Kathleen's photos of Jack Wax's work in welter at Reynolds Gallery

An artwork that packs a spiritual punch?

the work of Lauren Fensterstock and the work of Lori Talcott

 

An artwork that you'd like to see before you die?

I know I totally have an answer for this, but my mind is blanking

What art material do you love to nerd out on?

All hail the METAL

 

What was the last thing that you listened to in the studio?

MMMBop...I'm sad to say this is the real answer...and I did love it. Was anyone else absolutely devastated when they found out Hanson was indeed the Hanson BROTHERS, and that Taylor Hanson was, in fact, NOT a girl…and that you, a teen girl, had been modeling your style after a BOY?!?!?!? #Mortified #pre-internet

What's a book that changed your life?

Friends of Interpretable Objects by Miguel Tamen

 

What song, book, podcast or film do you think everyone should know about?

ok...there are a couple of podcasts that I love...The Dead Authors Podcast; Oh, Hello: the P'dcast; and the Museum of Curiosity (a bbc radio show) For Music...all things Beyonce

❤

Kathleen Kennedy is an artist, sculptor, jeweler, and educator based in Richmond, Virginia. She holds an MFA in Studio Art from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and a BFA in Craft/Material Studies from Virginia Commonwealth University. Kennedy is Assistant Professor of Art in Jewelry & Metalsmithing at Longwood University. Additional teaching includes Virginia Commonwealth University, the Haystack Mountain School of Craft, the Penland School of Craft, and Montgomery College. Kennedy is a recipient of the 2026–27 Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Visual Arts Fellowship and the 2023 Center for Craft Teaching Artist Fellowship. She serves on the Board of Directors of The Community for Ethical Jewelry. From 2017 to 2025 she served as Director of Radical Jewelry Makeover (RJM), an international jewelry mining and recycling project focused on education and collaboration. RJM lays bare the social and environmental destruction of mining, inspiring artists to shift their practices towards sustainable solutions, and asking communities to radically alter their habits of consumption. Kennedy teaches, lectures, and exhibits her work both domestically and abroad. 

For more about Kathleen Kennedy, go to her website and visit her on Instagram.