Kim MacConnel (born 1946 in

Oklahoma City Oklahoma City (), officially the City of Oklahoma City, and often shortened to OKC, is the capital and largest city of the U.S. state of Oklahoma. The county seat of Oklahoma County, it ranks 20th among United States cities in population, an ...

, Oklahoma) is an American artist who works with painting, sculpture, and

mixed media In visual art, mixed media describes artwork in which more than one medium or material has been employed. Assemblages, collages, and sculpture are three common examples of art using different media. Materials used to create mixed media art inc ...

- collage/fabric. MacConnel is a seminal figure in the

Pattern and Decoration Pattern and Decoration was a United States art movement from the mid-1970s to the early 1980s. The movement has sometimes been referred to as "P&D" or as The New Decorativeness. The movement was championed by the gallery owner Holly Solomon. The ...

movement of the seventies, but overall MacConnel's oeuvre has surpassed being categorized. MacConnel received his BA, with honors, from the University of California, San Diego in 1969 and his MFA, also with honors, in 1972.

Career

MacConnel had a lot of trouble starting out as an artist due to the fact that he had to come up against the

minimalism In visual arts, music and other media, minimalism is an art movement that began in post–World War II in Western art, most strongly with American visual arts in the 1960s and early 1970s. Prominent artists associated with minimalism include Do ...

of the time in the 1970s. During the Minimalist movement, artists weren't interested in color or even painting for the most part; MacConnel's art just wasn't accepted as serious. It also had partly to do with his material, instead of painting on stretched

canvas Canvas is an extremely durable plain-woven fabric used for making sails, tents, marquees, backpacks, shelters, as a support for oil painting and for other items for which sturdiness is required, as well as in such fashion objects as handb ...

, MacConnel instead painted on fabric and bed sheets, which he would tear apart and sew back together again. It wasn't until MacConnel was in an exhibition in (Germany) that his art became recognized.
:"It wasn't really until a German collector who wrote a newsletter for German collectors saw the work in a show that I was in Germany and was overcome by it. He thought it was really brilliant for some reason. And that's when a contingent of Europeans really started looking at what we were trying to do. Particularly in my case, what I was trying to do. And found that it resonated in that area for them as a new avenue into the future, really, of what art making might be. So it was revolutionary in some ways in terms of, like, the status quo".

Exhibitions

* ''Collection Applied Design'' in 1976 was MacConnel's first solo exhibition and was also his big break back in the states. A book, ''Collection Applied Design'', which he had found in

China Town A Chinatown () is an ethnic enclave of Chinese people located outside Greater China, most often in an urban setting. Areas known as "Chinatown" exist throughout the world, including Europe, North America, South America, Asia, Africa and Austr ...

a few years before, inspired the exhibition. This book was pages of

clip art Clip art (also clipart, clip-art) is a type of graphic art. Pieces are pre-made images used to illustrate any medium. Today, clip art is used extensively and comes in many forms, both electronic and printed. However, most clip art today is creat ...

and logos put together randomly, in no certain order, and without an index, which inspired his series of works, ''"10 Items or Less"'' which he put into the show. * ''Age of Plastic'' was his next big exhibition which he added more of the sculpture aspect of his work. He had been collecting beach items that had washed up on shore for two decades and finally decided how he wanted to utilize them. He used them into a series of works titled ''"Trashy Beach Clowns"'' where he used his found objects and transformed them into

clown A clown is a person who performs comedy and arts in a state of open-mindedness using physical comedy, typically while wearing distinct makeup or costuming and reversing folkway-norms. History The most ancient clowns have been found in ...

figures. * Another well recognized series of works that is more recent is ''"Woman with Mirror"'' in 2007. In this series he went back to his original medium of painting with acrylics. Like

Picasso Pablo Ruiz Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist and theatre designer who spent most of his adult life in France. One of the most influential artists of the 20th century, he is kn ...

had used

African art African art describes the modern and historical paintings, sculptures, installations, and other visual culture from native or indigenous Ethnic groups of Africa, Africans and the African continent. The definition may also include the art of the ...

as the subject of his work and added backgrounds of pattern, he would look at those backgrounds and take out the subject matter. * ''Collection Applied Design,'' A Kim MacConnel Retrospective, is his most recent exhibition, which came out this year and includes the last four decades of his work. He is getting a lot of publicity with this exhibition and through it is really making his name and art better known.

Personal life

MacConnel is married to artist Jean Lowe and lives in

Encinitas Encinitas (Spanish for "Small Oaks") is a beach city in the North County area of San Diego County, California. Located within Southern California, it is approximately north of San Diego, between Solana Beach and Carlsbad, and about south of ...

Sources

{{DEFAULTSORT:Macconnel, Kim Living people 1946 births American artists