Satellite Exhibition
Kendra Dawn Wadsworth: Ceramics and Paintings
February 11 – June 12, 2022
In Kendra Dawn Wadsworth’s paintings and ceramics, coarse, jagged surfaces expose her kinetic process. Competing dualities — confinement/exposure, entrapment/liberation, crumpling/unfolding, surface/depth — move across and through her works. These juxtapositions disclose a sensibility towards chaos that Wadsworth cultivates through intuition and material responsiveness. Yet, while Wadsworth engages objects and forms that suggest conflict and struggle, her decomposition implies regeneration. The decay and deterioration on view offer their own forms of energy.
Artist Statement:
Spontaneous, unpredictable, intuitive, layered, chaotic yet measured — Creating for me is an ever-changing process that is often filled with agony, wonder, surprise, disappointment, and bliss.
When I am in the studio it is the physicality of engagement with material that stimulates my process. Throwing, pouring, scraping, slapping, deconstructing, and re-constructing all excites and energizes me; propelling experimentation and finding meaning in mark and form.
Kendra Dawn Wadsworth earned a BFA in Painting and Printmaking from Virginia Commonwealth University and an MFA in Painting from The University of Pennsylvania. Wadsworth has had work shown extensively throughout the country and she is the recipient of many prestigious awards. For the past sixteen years, Wadsworth has been instructing fine arts at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. Prior to that, she was a fine arts instructor at numerous colleges and art centers in Philadelphia, New Jersey, and Tucson, Arizona. Wadsworth has also worked as a Union Scenic Artist 829 and 52 in New York City and Philadelphia; notably, designing and creating the installations for the Academy Award winning motion picture, "A Beautiful Mind."
For more information and examples of work, visit her website: kendradawnwadsworth.com and her Instagram: @kendradawnwadsworth