Judy Kensley Mckie
Judy Kensley McKie (1944–), a self-taught furniture maker, has produced some of the strongest and most original work to come out of the studio-furniture field. Her bronzes emit a powerful ambiguity: are these creatures friendly or not? Her stone pieces evoke the directness of Inuit carvings or Sumerian relics, and her carved and painted wood tables, chests, and chairs can emanate the freshness of a “just done” watercolor. It is difficult to be simple, and therein lies McKie’s genius. Both decidedly sculptural and determinedly practical, McKie’s work moves effortlessly across the boundaries between fine art and furniture. Above all else, the Boston native's work demonstrates the power of furniture as a means of personal expression.
McKie, who was named a fellow of the American Craft Council in 1998, received the Award of Distinction from The Furniture Society in 2005, the Master of the Medium Award from the James Renwick Alliance in 2005, and in 2008 the Luminary Award from the Fuller Craft Museum in Brockton, Massachusetts, to name but a few. Her work is in the permanent collections of the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, San Francisco, California; the Frederick Weisman Art Foundation, Los Angeles, California; the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; the Museum of Art and Design, New York City; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Boston, Massachusetts; the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC; and the Yale University Art Gallery,
