Glued together
> Lawrence artist makes found-object art from collected junk
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Lawrence artist Kendra Herring stands next to one of her pieces at the Olive Gallery & Art Supply, 15 E. 8th Street, Lawrence. Her pieces are put together using found objects, mostly from junk stores.
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Some people look like their dogs. Kendra Herring looks like her art.
She isn't covered in tattoos or wearing a cheesy T-shirt with one of her own pieces. And she doesn't look terribly hip. Maybe it's the dark wavy hair held back by a pink beret, with nearly matching lipstick, black glasses and shiny metallic blue earrings. But, she looks like if she found an old portrait of herself in sepia buried in some junk box at a flea market, she might stick it somewhere in one of her assembled works.
Of course, with the careful thought Herring puts into digging out all those found objects she uses in her pieces, chances are she's a product of the same aesthetic values she applies to her work. After all, those objects take some work to find, Herring said.
"There's a tendency to think that using objects is more immediate than painting or drawing, which it is, in a sense, but only after you've actually acquired the objects," she said. "People think, 'Oh you just glue shit together.' But you have to understand the whole search for the objects is half of it.
"That's really one of my favorite parts about working with objects. Definitely one of my passions is that whole collecting aspect to the work."
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'La Madre,' and 'Blue Altar,' by Kendra Herring.
Photographs by JJ DUNCAN/ROCKKANSAS.COM |
Herring's pieces, which were shown in a July show at Olive Gallery & Art Supply, hang like idols to an electric mother Mary decorated in flickering lights, rhinestones and even Pabst Blue Ribbon bottle caps. In a series of hearts, images of Mary herself are glued to the middle, and the larger pieces combine assortments of curious objects that invite close inspection by those who walk by.
Herring said she has been making shrines of different sorts since she was a child, when she would use the boxes her parents' checks came in and decorate them. The Catholic references in the pieces aren't entirely by coincidence, and neither are the allusions to Mexican folk art.
"I guess part of it is being raised Catholic," she said. "There's a definite reverence for objects and rituals in Catholicism, and that's so much a part of my work that I probably forget to even isolate that as an influence."
As for the Mexican flavor, Herring received a grant in 1999 from the Jerome Foundation, of St. Paul, Minn., to go south of the border and study the Day of the Dead, or Dia de Los Muertos in Mexico City and Oaxaca, Mexico.
"I took a lot of photos, and wrote, and collected objects," she said. "That was amazing. It was profound to be there, experiencing a cemetery at three in the morning with people paying their respects, drinking mezcal and lighting candles.
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"One of my passions is that whole collecting aspect to the work."
Kendra Herring
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"I think what resonates about that culture is the vibrancy and the flavor. There's just so much soul and spirit. And of course I say that as a white person looking in."
Herring grew up in Rochester, Minn., and after high school, she studied painting at the Minneapolis School of Art and Design for two and a half years before transferring to the Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland, Ore. She graduated with her bachelor degree from Pacific Northwest in 1995 and eventually worked her way to Lawrence after she "conveniently got evicted," as she puts it, from a studio space that she wasn't supposed to be using as a home.
The eviction was convenient because Herring said she had decided she wanted to find a community instead of the big cities that she was tiring of. Herring said her best friend in Portland had a brother attending the University of Kansas, and whenever she visited, she came back talking about how much she liked Lawrence.
After visiting, Herring decided to make Lawrence her home, and she went back to school just last year to earn her master's degree from KU, so at some point she can become a professor.
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'She Came to Me in Whispers ... and Left Her Magic Soul' is a mixed media piece by Kendra Herring.
Photographs by JJ DUNCAN/ROCKKANSAS.COM |
Herring said she enjoys living in the middle of the country as long as she gets to visit both coasts occasionally, and this way she's closer to family.
"What I love about living here compared to living in a big city, is that you can have the time and space to make what you need to make," she said. "Whenever I've lived in big cities, I feel like you spend half your time repelling stuff, and the other half embracing things or soaking things up. But it seems like life is pretty simple here."
Since moving to Lawrence, Herring's accessibly-priced work has won over at least some of the locals. Matt Pryor used one of her pieces for his Get-Up Kids' side-project, the New Amsterdams on the album cover of his 2001 release, "Para Toda Vida."
"I walked in, and her whole room looked like that painting," Pryor said, referring to the album cover. "I was like 'this is great,' and I said I wanted a sacred heart. And that's what she threw back at me."
For now, Herring said it is nice to be back in school so she can have her own studio space to use for not only creating her art, but storing some of the many little trinkets she picks up at garage sales, flea markets and junk stores. Those kinds of supplies can take up some room.
"Some of the stuff I've had for years, and I just keep it because I know some day it will work itself into a piece, but I'm always in pursuit of good junk," she said. "It's interesting watching how you're taste, you're aesthetics change or grow or stretch. Sometimes when I'm junking I'll see objects I would definitely have gotten two years ago, but now I'm like 'Oh I'm over that,' or 'I have enough of that.' I just am fascinated with the whole act of collecting."
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For More
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Kendra Herring's "Carnival Crushes" was displayed July 5-July 30 at the Olive Gallery and Art Supply, 15 E. 8th Street in Lawrence.
The Olive Gallery's current exhibit is "A Showing of Watercolors and Ink," by Kimbo. It will be on display until Aug. 27.
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Herring said she is curious about the histories of those objects, and the about whose hands they might have passed through before coming to her. Though Herring admits her collections can be burdensome, she knows not to take things too far.
"For the record I don't have cats, and I don't save every newspaper that ends up on my doorstep," she said. "Although I do find those people fascinating."
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