Statement
My works create space saturated with experience: challenges met and overcome, loss, success and failure. Stained canvas draped and stretched on scrap steel evokes endurance and the weight of time. I work steel roughly, leaving on it the violence of making. Pipe and plate are welded, cut, and welded again, leaving scars and stains on the metal. Many pipes have loops welded to them and can be join with chain-mending links into awkward structures. These loop-link joints are loose, forcing an organic approach to construction—adding and subtracting elements to find the structure’s strength and balance.
My canvas is stained it with hand-gathered dyestuffs. I cut and tear it to fit each installation. Mendings are wire loops, twine, knots. I use the same canvas and steel over and over.
Richard Long, Alicja Kwade, Mike Nelson are among the artists who influence my thinking about manipulating space. Canvas installations by Sam Gilliam and Dala Nasser are large in my mind, as are Magdalena Abakanowicz’s Abakans.
Contact
james at jamesmckenna dot us
CV
Selected Exhibitions
2024 Shelter, performed in Queensgate, Cincinnati, Ohio
2024 In the Heart of the Heart of the Country, installation in Northern Kentucky University faculty show, Highland Heights, Kentucky
2023 Cyclone, installation at PAR-Projects, Cincinnati, Ohio
2023 Directors’ Choice, Group Show, Reed Gallery, Cincinnati Ohio
2023 Remains, installation at Earth Day Group Show, Pyramid Hill Sculpture Park, Hamilton, Ohio
2023 Earthbound, installation in Ready to Bolt, Group Show, Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, Ohio
2023 Rectilinear, Installation, Solo Show, DAAP Annex Gallery, Cincinnati, Ohio
2023 Annual Juried Show, Marshall University, Huntington, West Virginia
2023 The Days, Installation, Solo Show, Tabula Rasa Gallery, Cincinnati, Ohio
2022 First Class Passage, Installation, Solo Show, DAAP Annex Gallery, Cincinnati, Ohio
2023 Winter Juried Show, Blue Mountain Gallery, Chelsea, New York
2022 Real Allegory of My Life as an Artist, performed at Annexibition, DAAP Annex, Cincinnati, Ohio
2022 Banners, Solo Show, Tabula Rasa Gallery, Cincinnati, Ohio
2022 Difficult Body, Solo Show, DAAP Annex Gallery, Cincinnati, Ohio
2022 I Feel Myself Alive in This Passing Moment, performed at IRiS Ignite Conference of the Institute for Research in Sensing, Cincinnati, Ohio
2022 Abstract, Group Show, Sebastopol Center for the Arts, Sebastopol, California
2022 Is It Done Yet? Group Show, Gallery 114, Portland, Oregon
2022 Beast, installation at Earth Day Group Show, Pyramid Hill Sculpture Park, Hamilton, Ohio
2022 Residual, Group Show, Tabula Rasa Gallery, Cincinnati, Ohio
2022 129, installation, Solo Show, DAAP Annex Gallery, Cincinnati, Ohio
2021 Group Show, Reed Gallery, Cincinnati Oho
2021 Field Work, Group Show, Meyers Gallery, Cincinnati, Ohio
2021 The Myth & the Thing Itself, Solo Show, Tabula Rasa Gallery, Cincinnati, Ohio
Awards
2023 DAAPworks Directors’ Choice Award, University of Cincinnati, College of Design, Art, Architecture & Planning
2022 Judith Smith Koroscik Graduate Fellowship, University of Cincinnati, College of Design, Art, Architecture & Planning
2022 Beverly Helmhold Erschell Endowed Scholarship, University of Cincinnati, College of Design, Art, Architecture & Planning
2022 Wolfstein Travel Fellowship (Iceland), University of Cincinnati, College of Design, Art, Architecture & Planning
Education
2023 MFA University of Cincinnati, College of Design, Art, Architecture & Planning
1992 MA, English, University of Cincinnati
Teaching
2023-24 Northern Kentucky University, School of the Arts, Highland Heights, KY
2021 University of Cincinnati, College of Design, Architecture, Art & Planning
2012 University of Cincinnati-Clermont, Batavia, OH
1992-95 University of Cincinnati, McMicken College of Arts and Sciences
Bio
For James McKenna the world is a tangible manifestation of the intangible. As an undergraduate in metalsmithing, he crafted damaged objects invoking the ritual life of a long-past imaginary culture. Later work with steel was built around a world of forces and archetypes behind the material world.
Engaging more deeply with materials, he began tracing his body with graphite and charcoal on paper, canvas, and drywall. Physical remainders of his absent body added time as another dimension of his practice. Relationships among the body, time, and the sacred—materiality and immateriality—are his primary themes. Installations of scrap steel and ragged, stained canvas recognize layers of human presence preceding his own, past purposes, feelings, and memories.
A graduate of DAAP in Cincinnati, James has shown around the US, including installations at the Contemporary Arts Center and Pyramid Sculpture Park.A graduate of DAAP in Cincinnati, Jameshas shown around the country, including installations at the Contemporary Arts Center and Pyramid Hill Sculpture Park.
