BUILDING ON RELATIONSHIPS Todd McKie 66 PT + Judy Kensley McKie 66 PT
Though artists Todd McKie 66 PT and Judy Kensley McKie 66 PT initially became buddies at RISD, they found their relationship “slipping into something else” while collaborating on a project with their friend Martin Mull 65 PT/MFA 67 (who subsequently moved on to a high-profile career as a TV and film actor and still makes wonderful paintings). The three were busy creating a student musical for Take a Break Weekend—an annual event that was big at the time—when things got steamy. “It was those late nights that did it,” Todd quips. It was spring of their sophomore year and he was taking a rare break from the studio to write the script for the show with Martin. Like Todd, Judy had settled on Painting as her major but unlike him, hadn’t actually found her medium. “My mind was never a painting mind,” she says now. “Even when working on 2D surfaces at RISD, I was better at thinking three-dimensionally.” Judy’s aha-moment didn’t actually come until after she and Todd had graduated, gotten married and were living in an almost empty apartment in Boston. “We couldn’t afford to buy furniture,” she explains. “But my
Todd’s recent paintings are as colorful and distinctive as ever. The two shown here are called Sunny with a Chance of Seafood (flashe on paper collage, 28 x 33") and Look Up and Live (flashe on canvas, 24 x 20"). One of Todd’s pieces is on view through September 18 at the deCordova Sculpture Museum in Lincoln, MA.
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father had a drill press in his garage, so I taught myself how to put together simple wooden pieces using dowel joints.” Before long, Judy began carving and painting benches, tables, chairs and even bunkbeds for friends and family—and with every custom-made piece she got better, refining her skills and hungering to push further still. When a friend in California introduced her to cast bronze, she began working in both wood and metal—and producing twice as much work. “After that, she dropped painting like a hot potato,” Todd chimes in. “But seriously, her background as a painter has always informed the surfaces of her furniture.” “I don’t think the Painting degree hurt,” Judy agrees. “If I’d studied furniture design, I might have ended up making more conventional furniture instead of allowing [my practice] to evolve on its own.” As Judy pursued her newfound passion for making furniture, she developed a unique voice and shared studio space with another young furniture maker, Rosanne Somerson 76 ID, now president of RISD. Meanwhile, Todd was honing his own style as a painter and showing witty abstracts throughout the country. “There’s a veneer of humor in my work,” he says, “but I’m not dealing with humorous topics. “People say that you need only one good teacher,” Todd adds. “For me that was [late Professor] Richard Merkin MFA 63 PT, who was always very encouraging. I remember him telling me not to be too precious about my work— to get it out there at any price and then move along to the next piece.” As well-known artists in their own right, Todd and Judy have rarely collaborated, but they frequently give each other feedback and call themselves “our own best critics. That honesty is a great gift,” says Todd. “You don’t always get it from the outside world.”