Kris Kessey's Gallery

My work helps me connect to the natural world.  I explore imagery derived from nature.  My work centers on the fragility of the environment that humans seek to manipulate.  I strive for the work I create to stimulate thinking beyond the physical materials, tactile qualities and socio-political issues relating to the environment.  While the work I make is strongly personal, it touches on issues that are common to us all... identity, emotion, love, turmoil, misfortune, peace, and growth.  I seek metaphors that weave our humanity with nature to find answers to life’s questions.  Art has often been interrogatory.  I make art to help me formulate my questions about life and the world I live in.  I choose to create metaphorical references in the form of both objects and installations. 

Over the past several years  glass has become an integral part of the work I make.  It works well in combination with wood, bronze, clay, paper and other media.   Glass has intrigued the alchemists and fascinated the scientists for centuries.  I, like them, love the light, reflection and transparency of it.   Glass is an incredible material which can be bent and blown and carved and cast and broken and???  There is much yet to be discovered and explored about this medium.  It can be predictable and yet totally unpredictable.  Working with glass takes me to a mental space I like to be in -- that of wondering... What will happen next?  What if?  

www.kriskessey.com