Courtney McKenna (BFA Art Education and Fibers, Dec. 2010) will be showing her recent work in a two-person show HUSH at the Lincoln Arts Project in Waltham. The opening reception will be held Friday, February 22nd from 7-10pm. HUSH will be open until the closing reception on March 30th.
Born on the same day 26 years ago, Mallory April Biggins and Courtney McKenna both studied Fibers with a small group of women at Massachusetts College of Art and Design. They are now employed at the same art studio for adults with disabilities and have found their professional and creative lives undeniably intertwined. Each individually exploring her experience of the peaks and pitfalls of womanhood, Biggins and McKenna will present their work together in their first collaborative show, HUSH.
Courtney McKenna uses subtle and elegant embroidery to explore the metaphysical connections between the interiors of a woman’s body and the interiors of the homes they create. Quiet and suggestive, McKenna combines traditional needlework techniques with naturally aged vintage linens which summon thoughts of dish towels and petticoats – cloth close to the body, and cloth close to the home. The artist’s thousands of tiny, ornate stitches accumulate in vivid anatomical illustrations of pelvic bones and a developing fetus, both grotesque and beautiful pieces of a woman’s physical body. McKenna’s work speaks to the energy and concentration we commit to things beyond ourselves, and the way the action of a woman’s body is often dedicated to the good of the home.
Mallory April Biggins’ work is a material investigation into the ways women hold both a domestic touch and the ferocious potential for large-scale change. Biggins amplifies the voices of activist icons like Mother Jones, Lucy Parsons and Emma Goldman into loud, bright pieces of fiber work buzzing with kinetic energy. Humbly functional objects like quilts, pillows and embroidered wallhangings emblazoned with provocative slogans and aggressive speech illustrate the way a womens’ domestic identity is so often mismatched with her desire to be an agent of change. To snuggle up beneath a quilt loudly displaying Mother Jones’ rallying cry is to illustrate the mysterious dichotomy of womanhood; that we are both the menders of stitched seams and, simultaneously, the swift, fierce hands that shred them apart.
