Saturday, November 14
7pm-midnight
554 Evanswood Place (in Clifton)
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RSVP Today!
The suggested donation is $25 for adults and $15 for people under 18 (All minors must be accompanied by a responsible adult). Please make your checks out to “Friends of SCPA” and write "Esme Kenney" in the memo line. Mail your checks to Sean Mullaney, 554 Evanswood Place, Cincinnati, Ohio 45220. $30 and $20 the day of the party.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Monday, November 9, 2009
About the Artist
Jessie Henson of New York City has been selected as project artist. Jessie has Cincinnati roots, and was a dear friend of Esme's. She graduated from SCPA's visual arts program, and has a BFA from Corcoran in Washington DC, as well as a MFA from Rutgers University. (Initial concept sketch shown below).
Esme Louise Kenney Memorial Proposal
"I would like to create a piece of work that embodies as much of the idea of Esme transformed into an 'explosion of light' as possible. When I envision something for Esme I think of color, and brightness. The week that Esme died I worked with a glass artist in Cincinnati. He took broken cast offs of figurines, and melted them together for me to create brilliants orbs of various shades of blue. This process of the resurrection of the glass, along with the brightness of the fire and intensity of the heat, were all incredibly cathartic as I was awe struck with grief. I continue to see the poetic beauty of the glass as a perfect symbol for Esme, her clarity and strength, but also her fragility, and now her ability to live on in a new light, shifting form but constantly present.
To create a piece in the atrium space at SCPA I would continue the process of working with glass artists to make large orbs of glass of various sizes and colors, all falling within a general definition of blue: the color of Esme’s brilliant eyes and her fantastic first guitar. Together this menagerie of orbs would hang from the ceiling, creating an exploding chandelier. The individual “chandeliers” would be a series of mobiles, dense in the center and expanding outward. A celestial sky of blue, with stars of color, illuminated by the changing light of the day.
Having walked into the old SCPA building for nine of my formative years, I am also interested in bringing the stained glass that greeted you upon entrance of the building into a new, three dimensional form. This new interpretation would carry on the historical tradition of using stained glass as a memorial for a loved one, the illumination of the glass reflecting the light of one who has been lost.
It would be my hope to bring as much involvement with SCPA students as possible into the process of making a piece for them. I would want to share Esme’s enthusiasm for community and to her school into anything that memorializes her. As a musician who played in an ensemble, I think that this communal effort would be essential to how Esme would approach an artistic endeavor, and I would want to honor that spirit. This could involve putting the work together, or perhaps even etching words into the glass, which is something that Lisa expressed interest in. If I were to make this work, I would plan on spending a significant amount of time in Cincinnati in order to create it.
As a student at SCPA, I was deeply influenced by my work with Althea Thompson, and seeing her own work as an artist outside of SCPA was critical to my ability to envision growing up as an artist. We were also given an opportunity to work with an artist as she prepared for a show at the CAC. I see this now as essential to my understanding that although art is often a solitary process, it sometimes takes many people to get something done, and that the uniqueness of many individual hands and interpretations on a single theme is often more powerful than one hand alone.
It would be a great honor to be able to memorialize Esme in this way. I am blessed to have known her as I did, and it would be a further blessing to be given the opportunity to learn more of her life and her powerful influence on all of the people around her by working with the other people who also loved her as endlessly as I do."
~Jessie Henson, artist
To create a piece in the atrium space at SCPA I would continue the process of working with glass artists to make large orbs of glass of various sizes and colors, all falling within a general definition of blue: the color of Esme’s brilliant eyes and her fantastic first guitar. Together this menagerie of orbs would hang from the ceiling, creating an exploding chandelier. The individual “chandeliers” would be a series of mobiles, dense in the center and expanding outward. A celestial sky of blue, with stars of color, illuminated by the changing light of the day.
Having walked into the old SCPA building for nine of my formative years, I am also interested in bringing the stained glass that greeted you upon entrance of the building into a new, three dimensional form. This new interpretation would carry on the historical tradition of using stained glass as a memorial for a loved one, the illumination of the glass reflecting the light of one who has been lost.
It would be my hope to bring as much involvement with SCPA students as possible into the process of making a piece for them. I would want to share Esme’s enthusiasm for community and to her school into anything that memorializes her. As a musician who played in an ensemble, I think that this communal effort would be essential to how Esme would approach an artistic endeavor, and I would want to honor that spirit. This could involve putting the work together, or perhaps even etching words into the glass, which is something that Lisa expressed interest in. If I were to make this work, I would plan on spending a significant amount of time in Cincinnati in order to create it.
As a student at SCPA, I was deeply influenced by my work with Althea Thompson, and seeing her own work as an artist outside of SCPA was critical to my ability to envision growing up as an artist. We were also given an opportunity to work with an artist as she prepared for a show at the CAC. I see this now as essential to my understanding that although art is often a solitary process, it sometimes takes many people to get something done, and that the uniqueness of many individual hands and interpretations on a single theme is often more powerful than one hand alone.
It would be a great honor to be able to memorialize Esme in this way. I am blessed to have known her as I did, and it would be a further blessing to be given the opportunity to learn more of her life and her powerful influence on all of the people around her by working with the other people who also loved her as endlessly as I do."
~Jessie Henson, artist
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