In her new column, Studio Sense, contributor Maria Vogel asks an artist to take us on a tour inside their studio using the five senses.
When the finished product is as monumental as a sculpture created by Kennedy Yanko, it begs the question, where did this originate from? As Yanko’s star continues to rise in the years since she swapped a paintbrush for mechanical gloves, the studio remains the space she returns to for solace and inspiration.
Next up for this boundary-breaking artist, who just announced joint representation with James Cohan Gallery and Salon 94, is a group exhibition curated by Allison Glenn at The Shepard, a new public arts campus debuting this August in Detroit.
Read on as Yanko walks us through the experience of being in her studio through the five senses (plus a bonus prompt).
Currently, in Yanko’s studio…
What are you looking at?
I’m staring at my feet, walking alongside and around the white wall that I gaze into, and then find my nose in a book and back to the pacing. I’m looking at every little thing at once.
What are you touching?
Gummy paint skins and then hot glasses full of tea; my pen and my notebook and then my hand on my worn blue velour couch where I continue to stare.
What are you listening to?
My feet, pacing. Walking, pacing, walking, pacing against the painted concrete floor. Sometimes I’ll have a person, a podcast, or music in my air pods. I have very tiny ears, so they fall out, it’s a start stop, start, stop. Trucks in the loading dock exhaling above my basement studio. Machines clamoring, the grinder grinding.
What are you tasting?
Vegan blueberry muffins from the bakery down the hall. A latte from the Dunkin Donuts at the gas station next door. I’m always eating while doing, smoking while seeing. Tasting in motion.
What are you smelling?
Rubber, iron, blood. The smell of my kindergarten. A hint of hops, the heater blasting. The stench of the MMA studio a few doors down.
What are you thinking about?
I’m thinking and chewing and churning color to a thought, to a philosophy, to angst, to an ecstatic state.
Words by Maria Vogel
