ARTIST STATEMENT / BIO
Kerry Larkin is a designer and maker who explores place, connection, and narrative through different media: architecture, art, product design, craft, and writing.
Trained formally as an architect, Kerry’s early experience as a fellow at Auburn University’s Rural Studio immersed her in a rural community and landscape inviting her to investigate how we tell our stories through memory, connection to place, and community. That year, Rural Studio was included in the Whitney Biennial, cementing Kerry’s desire to explore the intersection of art, design, and craft. Drawing on her family roots as Pennsylvania Dutch quilters, Kerry founded Comma Workshop in 2010, a textile design studio that explored people, place, and narrative through quilt-making. Kerry stitched thousands of words into her quilts, and the words became the equivalent of the patches and patterns of a traditional quilt.
Part of the inspiration for these quilts rose out of her experience in the rural Deep South of the United States. She was fascinated by the way people gave directions, foregoing route numbers and street signs, and utilizing sensory experience and memory instead: “Just past the bend you’ll see the Williams’ old property; we used to build forts in their woods…” In addition, her meditation practice and Buddhist studies informed the thoughtful, quiet aesthetic of the quilts. Writing the narratives in the second person, the reader became part of the story, engaged in place-making. Kerry’s work has been included in the Smithsonian Craft Show, the Museum of Design Atlanta, The New York Times, American Craft magazine, and design stores across the country.
Kerry’s past projects have reflected a wide variety of interests: from teaching Industrial Design to working as a Creative Director at a fashion/tech start-up, the continuous thread of community and connection resonates throughout. Most recently, her quilt ‘I Don’t Know You, But I Want To Be Close To You’ was included in the exhibit Look Both Ways: The Illicit Liaison Between Image and Information at SVA Chelsea Gallery, curated by Debbie Millman.
Dotted throughout the liminal phases of her life, Kerry‘s owned a yoga studio, sheared a sheep or two, and once built an 80-foot-long Big Yellow Arrow and drove it across the country. She finds those in-between things: the late night side projects and the purely-from-the-heart explorations continue to reveal so much to her.