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Artist Statement
Donald Kennedys biography:
Born in New York City, in 1937, where lived until ten when he was hit by a car. Donalds parents fearing more adversities could happen in New York city than the country the family moved to East Hampton, New York. A small town on the eastern end of Long Island, where he attended East Hampton High school, graduating in 1955. After the school day he worked for Don Braiders Books and Music, this was more than a normal book & music store. The owner; Don Braider collected and sold autographed first editions along with the normal literary fair. I addition to the book store there was a gallery in the back that exhibited the new abstract art where the likes of Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline, William De Kooning, Ibrham Lassaw, James Brooks, Lee Krazner, Pearl Fine and other Abstract Expressionists exhibited their art. These artists were also members of the community freshly expatriated from New York City. On some weekends he would have Jamb Sessions with musicians like Cutty Cutchall, Edmond Hall Wild Bill Davidson, George Wettling and Larry Rivers. On other weekends there were prose and poetry readings writers like Carl Sandburg, Kenneth Koch would read there latest poetry or excerpts from their latest prose works. Although many were weekend guests most had relocated to the area to live and work in the area and needed a venue to try out their work outside of the studio and view the work with fresh eyes and also have a sounding board and gain some feedback. As one may readily see it was a unique time in the history of the arts.
After graduation Donald attended the University of Oklahoma and during the summer break, he worked at the newly opened and artist owned Signa Gallery the owners were Alfonso Ossorio, John Little and Elizabeth Parker. Like Books and Music the gallery exhibited the Abstract Expressionists, being quite a bit larger it only featured art and primarily abstract art and avant-garde artists as the gallery grew it also included the European Abstractionists many of whom had never exhibited in the United States before and wouldnt have if it werent for the devastation of the Second World War, since there were no markets for art in war torn Europe.
At first glance these early gallery jobs seem rather pedestrian they were by no means ordinary, they were akin to a highly advanced course in contemporary art that had the unusual caveat of having personal input from the arts creators. Which when viewed in retrospect can only be seen as an artist or art historians dream job. It seems that Donald was blessed when he was at University of Oklahoma he worked with Amelio Amero world renowned lithographer and muralist. Senor Amero was from Mexico and was in a class with the great muralists like Jose Riviria and Sequiarious. Almost incidentally Bruce Goff taught architecture at the same university and was another renowned organic architect like Frank Lloyd Wright and being friends he would have Wright address his students as well as other interested parties at the university.
When Donald was just fresh out of college he worked for Orin Riley in the Conservation dept. of the Guggenheim Museum. Upon leaving the museum he apprentice himself to Fredrich Kiesler, the avant-garde architect and sculptor who designed Peggy Guggenheims Museum for Abstract Art, The Museum for the Dead Sea Scrolls, the World House Gallery and the Endless House. Kiesler was also famous for his innovative set designs like the Emperor Jones play that he designed for Julliard in 1928. Emperor Jones set were unique in concept, since the sets continually moved and changed through out the play and to make the application of the idea more remarkable the implementation of continual motion was all done manually on casters and flown in and out of view with pulleys using sand bags as counter weights. This was the precursor of the modern Broadway or London play.
Being an apprentice he fabricated Kieslers sculpture and repaired his architectural models, which was a tremendous learning experience for a young artist. After two years with Kiesler he opened a frame shop on East 10th St. in New York City and when it closed due to a recession, he then worked for the Paper Mill Playhouse and shortly after he became the master carpenter and set builder for the Negro Ensemble Company.
In 1973 he returned to East Hampton and bought a house on three and half acres in the woods, having just closed a very successful stage scenery business called The Shop, in New York City. The Shop had built many sets for television and off-Broadway. Most notable being One Flew Over the Cookoos Nest for the new Mercer-Hansberry Theatre (since destroyed), Un Grande Coke Cola, the Enola Gay, Shelly Winters three one act plays for off Broadway, Joe Papps Jungle of Cities for the Public Theatre, Cabaret in Boston and Beggars Opera for television. The Shop twice modified the auditorium floor of the Guggenheim Museum in order to accommodate two audience participation pieces one called, The Liquid Theater and the other a movable sculpture suite by the French sculptor Jean Dubuffet, arranged with special poetry and music. Both unique performance pieces needed structures to support several thousand pounds of people, sculpture and scenery. As a point of departure, The Shop started branching out into interior design and constructed five floors of exhibition rooms for Design Research on E 57th St. and an exhibition room for Scope Furniture in the center of their factory. The innovative design was featured in Interiors Magazine. The object of the exhibition space was view the finished furniture from a sealed room away from the noise and dust of the manufacturing, while still watching the furniture being built, through oval windows in the showrooms walls. Scope Furniture only designed furniture for entire office buildings, executive suites or boardrooms. A unique feature of the company was its fabric designs that are woven and dyed in their own mills from wool furnished by their own sheep and are not sold to anyone else.
Now out of New York, Donald had the time and space to concentrate on building monumental metal sculpture. Again in a rural environment Donald became fascinated with antique farm trucks and farm equipment. So much so he did a series of transparent watercolors, pastels and acrylic paintings on the subject, one of the watercolors is now in the Brandywine River Museum in Pennsylvania most of the rest is in private collections. Since his return to East Hampton, he has exhibited in most of the galleries and museums on the eastern end of Long Island and several in New York City. While on a hiatus from metal sculpture and just after the death of his mother, Donald started to carve in wood, a radical departure from the build up method of metal sculpture construction. After many hours that extended into months he carved Interjacence (which means in the middle of and is dedicated to his mother) in spalted American elm, that he lovingly hand rubbed with twenty coats of Tung oil. The sculpture now resides in the permanent collection of Columbia University on its Harriman Campus, in upstate New York. Shortly this sculptures completion Jimmy Ernst a friend and fellow artists asked him to participate in the Poets and Painters exhibition in Guild Hall, the show was comprised of single size paintings in a 5x 7 format. Poets and painters were paired together either by friendship or mutual respect of each others work. Donald collaborated with Simon Perchick. The poem was called Turn Your Head Death Man Included in the show were many of the major American poets and artists of the time. The paintings included the text of a specific poem and an image that was inspired the artists vision upon reading the poem.
Not withstanding Donalds years of scenery and exhibition construction brought forth a request to design a modern exhibition space in the non-historic portion of John Howard Paynes famous residence, Home Sweet Home. (Payne was one of Americas first actors, authors, poets and a statesmen), The project well received by the community, his design was elegant in its simplicity and included a vaulted ceiling in the manner of Bullfinch or Asher Benjamin (two early American architects) with recessed lights for ambient lighting and strategic spot lights to focus on special or important work, there were also floor receptacles for museum cases and provisions for rear screen projections. Although it is a small exhibition space it is unparalleled for the variety of exhibition options. Within a few years Donalds work was featured in the Hammer Galleries on West 57th St. in New York City where he showed his large tour de force (3 x 4) drawings of historic buildings and realistic paintings of farm equipment painted in acrylic. Returning to abstract metal sculpture he is presently concentrating on drawing and gouache paintings both realistic and abstract.
Exhibitions
1990
Alden Conference Center on the Harriman Campus of Columbia University.
1990 Business Class Donation to Columbia University
1986
Brandywine Museum, Chad's Ford, PA
Contempory American Watercolors
2002
Alex Echo Gallery, #8 Main St.East Hampton, NY
Heart and Valentines
1998
The Hammer Gallery, 33 west 57th NYC
Contemporary Realists
Reviews and Press
"To a Violent Grave, an Oral Biography of Jackson Pollock" book by Jeffrey Potter.
"Art and Soul" book by Adury Flack.
1987
Art in Public Places, Town Hall East Hampton, NY
CBS TV 7 O'clock NEWS
1988
The New York Times
Contemporary Paintings of Barns Helen A. Harrison
1994
ABC TV "Good Morning America"
Sculpture on Long Island