About

As an undergraduate James McKenna studied metalsmithing. In years after, he worked in a variety of creative fields. In the early 2000s he returned to metal, this time to steel, and his practice evolved into assemblages of steel and other materials. In 2023 he received an MFA from the College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning at University of Cincinnati.Since 2023, he has focused on a studio art practice that, besides sculpture, includes installations, performance, and video. He lives outside Cincinnati, where he remains available for commissions of art and furniture in styles shown on this site.

Artist's Statement

Years ago I realized that my work builds meaning with materials, texture, and form. I don't ignore color, but for me materials determine color. As I shifted from working with new steel to using salvaged steel, wood, and other materials, I learned that things with a past evoke feelings that new things can’t. I noticed as well that the surfaces of used things tell stories. They’re scarred and stained, rusted, weathered.

The sculptural art I make today reflects my affinity for things with history. Most of the wood I use is oak and hard maple from the pallets that carry nearly everything we bring into our homes. Most of my steel comes from scrapyards: pipe torn out of factories; bits of structural steel discarded by fabrication shops where workers in dim light and the smell of oil and burnt metal build truck frames and machine parts by hand.

In my own work too I use tools to shape metal and wood. Apart from their intended uses, these tools make interesting marks I develop into textures. You see in my work natural textures too: rust, wear, and corrosion and decay. My colors are almost all inherent in their materials: blackened steel and shades of rust, raw and weather-darkened wood, the brilliance of gold and of polished steel, copper, and bronze.

The quality that ties the crude aesthetic of my fine art work to the grace of my steel tables is an urge to be free of gravity. Nearly everything I make defies or resists gravity with suspension or hidden supports. The tables express this urge with soaring arcs of steel bent cold by hand.