Take an exclusive look inside artist Kennedy Yanko's art studio
“At 7 years old, my dad signed me up for a watercolor class for senior women. It was me and a bunch of 80-year-old women, just how I like it,” Yanko says with a laugh.“I realized I could create worlds with my art when I was 15,” says artist Kennedy Yanko. Those worlds consist of dreamy sculptures and installations made out of paint skins and repurposed metals which she finds in scrap yards up and down the East Coast.
For most of the year, six days a week, Yanko can be found working in her beloved Bushwick studio. The space is a home away from home, equipped with a living room and kitchen. “A lot of my creative practice is about self-care,” she says, “relaxing and having a space where I feel at home and I feel like my body can rest, it really allows information to come to me and through me.
“When I first started painting, I painted on canvas, but I was always seeking a different kind of support that could offer more dimension. Eventually, I graduated to painting on rubber sheets, which allowed me to manipulate the canvas’s shape more easily when mounting it on the wall. But it wasn't until I finally took paint off of the canvas, that I realized its full potential. I think I’ll be refining paint skins for the rest of my life, and translating them into other material...
“My motivation lies in knowing that showing up [to my studio] over time is what’s gotten me where I am, and I’m really just getting started.”“I spend a lot of time just looking at my work, and reading here. I'm often looking and thinking for months…I really cherish this little corner here that I have.”Whether she’s pursuing her art career or tapping into new realms, Yanko lives by a forward-moving mantra.
“I don’t have any favorite pieces of my own. I’m much more interested in processes than final forms. The first thing I do when looking at a work in a museum or at a gallery is go to its sides and look behind it, or look beneath it, and try to figure out how it was made,” Yanko says. “In my own practice, I take so much away from making and feeling my material with my hands...
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