5 & 5 With Kevin Demery
Assistant Gallery Manager and Staff Writer Jaede Bayala sat down with new AIR Kevin Demery for a studio visit.
Q: Has being in such a large studio space influenced what mediums you’re working with?
A: Yeah, it already has. I mean, this piece I put into the first show, that piece I made here. I started it at Agnes and finished it here. It was commissioned by the 5M Collective. It certainly got bigger; like my final lap finishing it up got bigger when I stepped into this space. So I think while I'm gonna stay in the woodworking realm, I'm definitely gonna be extremely ambitious with the scale, and you know it's also making me think about making things that are large but also collapsible so the space can continue to be used in an expansive way.
Q: What themes have been most important for you to examine right now?
A: I'm thinking a lot about history as a game of telephone. I'm thinking about how we are all interconnected through history, but oftentimes, we are not aware of the connective tissue that allows us to have a deeper relationship with any given subject. Right now I’m going to work on a project that's dealing with some of the history of the Reagan administration and how its work and its regime laid the groundwork for so many things that came after it that we can take for granted cause its a presidency especially in North America so that’s going to be considered significant in terms of how it affects the world because of the hegemonic nature of America right now. But there are so many nuances to the 1980s, and I wasn't born yet, but I find that really interesting.
Q: How has being an educator influenced your practice?
A: I mean, you become more conscious of time. I’ve already seen one group come and go through their whole BFA, and I was a young teacher. I started at 28 in 2021; I was only, in many cases, 10 to 11 years older than the students I was working with, and now the group I keep working with stays the same age, but I’m aging. I’m 33, gonna be 34 in November, so how it influences my practice is that it makes me think about how time is all relative. It's in your mind; it's a constant because it's happening, but you’re not always aware that your relationship to time dictates more about how your experience is than the actual practice of time passing itself. So working with students makes me realize that I'm a mentor to people now, and you kind of always in your head feel like you're young; it's something about, like, for me, it might be easy to always feel like this person that just left their BFA but you look up and you have people that are like, “Tell us about your fifteen tears of experience “ and you’re like, oh it has been 15 years.
Q: Where have you found community in Kansas City?
A: I am fortunate enough that I came here to KCAI; I moved here for it, so that was my first point of contact. I have to say truthfully, I haven’t gone too far outside of that orbit because most people I connect with in one shape or form are connected to it in some way, but I think that’s special. Ain’t nothing wrong with a college town. But I think other than that, residencies- so, you know, the Charlotte Street Foundation expanded the people I knew that weren't connected to that institution; this place here expands people that I'm connected to by being in a city that is really fruitful for the arts.
Q: What are your plans for your work moving forward? Any big projects?
A: I’m collaborating with some dancers, so Oscar Trujillo, who’s a dancer here in Kansas City, and Alexis Borth, who’s from here but is based in New York right now. We have had one session, and we’ll be doing one at the end of this month, using this space as the practice space because it’s a collaboration of visual arts, movement, and dance. Right now I'm thinking about it like I’m making props that they engage with, and we're writing a piece together, but I'm really excited about that, kind of like the tradition of a merse cunningham theater and I like to think about the artwork as something That can be engaged by movement artist not just costumes and backdrops, so some of the tactility of the new sculptures I’ve been doing is very inspired by that and will continue to show up in the work.
You can learn more about Kevin here.