Spotlight: Millicent Kennedy, Visual Artist

Millicent Kennedy’s practice is interested in how we archive a physical world in flux. Through skills both laborious and ancient including book and box making, natural dye, and hand stitching, Kennedy connects to the knowledge of generations of unknown hands who worked to hold their world together.

How did you find yourself on an artist’s path? What different creative media do you use in your work?

I am happiest as an artist and person when I am in the middle of a project.

My background is in printmaking, book arts and textiles, recently I have been screenprinting my own fabrics with natural dyes and then using these textiles in sculptural quilted artworks that frequently contain found objects sewn into my printed fabrics.

I’m interested in the history of materials and the built world and thinking about how we can treat misfit material as a natural resource.

Do you do series work? How does that affect your approach? Do you plan your work out ahead of time, or do you just dive in with your materials and start playing? Does your work have stories to tell? Are you a “finisher”?

I tend to work in series, works that are related to one another and expand upon a theme in variation.

I’m currently working on two series of works, one thinking about the boundaries of public and private space using windows and fences as a starting point, but this is expanding as I engage with the subject matter longer.

I find that I am often getting to know the work as I am making it, understanding how others are going to see it also takes time.

The other series works with broken and worn tools that are shrouded into archival boxes. In the fall I am hoping to do a call for participants to donate broken tools and stories about them, and work on this process further.

Even if I originally think that something is a one-off project, I tend to come back around to it. I think of this as a spiral staircase, I’m back to a similar subject, but also seeing it from another place.

This is how I feel about some of my ephemeral material based work like Generations and Useful Life. In Generations an image carved into rolling pins is “printed” into a fragile material like flour or sugar. In Useful Life I sewed together peels from citrus fruits to make a table cloth and invited participants to join me, and have snacks from the peeled fruit.

There are ephemeral projects, but the ideas around labor, ephemera and communal acts run throughout them both.

Describe your creative space. Working across many different media, how do you organize all of your creative supplies? What plays in the background while you work? Silence? Music, audiobooks, podcasts, movies? If so, what kind?

I work on the natural dye and printing part of my practice at my studio at Cleaner Gallery and Projects.

I tend to make books and boxes based projects at my home because my outside studio is set up for printmaking and dyeing and I want to avoid some of the cross contamination that could happen if working in the same space. Also I almost always have a smaller sewing project with me for when I have downtime in the day.

I’m usually listening to an audiobook about a subject that is coming up in the work I’m making, or music while I have a friend over to make things in the studio.

How often do you start a new project? Work on multiple projects at a time? Do you work actively on more than one project at a time?

I always have a few projects going at the same time. Partly because I have quite a lot of parts of my practice that take a lot of time, dyes that need to steep or dye, fabric that needs to be steamed, stitches that are slow and time consuming to finish.

Being able to shift focus when I am troubleshooting something in the work is really helpful for me.

Which part of the design process is your favorite? Which part is a challenge for you?

I love the problem-solving stage or making an artwork, the time when anything feels solvable. The contrasting challenge of logistics tends to slow me down in many ways, but it’s also interesting in its own way.

How does your formal art education help your work develop? Does it ever get in the way? 

I went to an art high school and went on to take academia in the arts very seriously. While this has of course given me a lot of skills, context for contemporary art, and introduced me to colleagues and friends, there are also drawbacks.

A lot of young artists (little Millicent included) have abandoned an art process they were drawn to because they didn’t get a good critique for it once. I would encourage everyone to revisit their orphaned projects that are still of interest to them. If you still see value in it, it already has value, and you can always learn a lot from revisiting your work.

Is there an overarching theme that connects all of your work?

The history of objects/materials and connections with place run throughout my work. As a curator I think that the idea of an archive directs me towards thinking about stories seen through materials.

I also find that my work is often in conversation with traditional and nearly lost methods of making (bookmaking, natural dyes, etc.), which, for me, is about connecting to the makers of the past. At its center, I think ideas around labor, generational knowledge/trauma, and reclaiming materials for your own, drive my work forward.

What triggered the evolution to new media/kinds of work/ways of working?

A lot of research frequently brings me to new directions.

For example with “We Have Hands and So We Work” began with abandoned tools and a donated broken sewing machine led me to reflect on the textile industry.

Fabric was our first technology, allowing us to transport materials, shroud our bodies, and live in inhospitable environments. The sewing machine, which facilitated a swift turn in the industrial revolution was in its time highly contentious. The first fully sewing machine-operated factory was burned down by tailors fearing the loss of their hand-stitched industry.

The history of textile work has historically been undervalued, experienced craftspeople were outpriced in lace making because labor was taken without the payment of orphans and nuns. Though technology has changed, the cycle of exploitation has not. The hands present in the edition of prints are sourced from documentary videos and photographs of workers in sweatshops, sewing garments, and mixing dye vats. The title of the installation piece is also pulled from a worker’s statement “We have hands, and so we work”

The action of dismantling and hand-stitching a sewing machine into hand-printed and dyed textiles ritualizes the embedding of technological advancements in their historic roots. The dichotomy of industry and slow stitch come together in these works using second source materials and seizing the means of production simultaneously.

Do you prefer the kind of project that is challenging and requires attention, or the kind where you get in your meditative zone and enjoy the process?

Definitely both, parts of my work require both complete focus, and repetitive slowness.

Where can people see your work?

Currently, I have work at Golden Years Cocktail Lounge, and in November I’ll be part of a group show titled Thirst Trap at Bridgeport Art Center both in Chicago, and you can also join my email list for updates on upcoming projects!

Website: www.Millicentkennedy.com
Instagram: @millicentkennedystudios

Interview posted August 2024