We were lucky to catch up with Lacey McKinney recently and have shared our conversation below.

Lacey, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

A meaningful project I have worked on over the past several years is the body of work I call Reconfiguration, where the body parts of women appear trapped within the confines of each composition. I started making paintings for this series while working as an artist in residence at the McColl Center for Art + Innovation, later moving back to Syracuse, NY to work with the Everson Museum of Art to develop an exhibition based around the ideas in Reconfiguration. During the time I was preparing for the show, I transitioned media, experimenting with alternative photographic processes merged with drawing and collage. I began to employ more human/plant/animal hybrids to think about what it would be like to experience another’s subjectivity and to present other species as a proxy for gender difference.

Lacey, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I grew up in a home full of creativity and making from the start, so it was not surprising that being a visual artist became my life’s work. The women in my family raised me, my mother and grandmother, and through them, I learned how to sew, paint, and craft almost anything from humble materials. Now I teach college-level drawing, design, and photography. I maintain an active studio practice, exhibiting my work, and traveling the world for the sake of art.

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

We need a cultural shift in how art is valued as a part of society. For example, the arts lack support in educational systems and are not bolstered equally for the benefit and growth of young students. Arts are considered “specials”, meaning extra subjects that do not get adequate face time with students. Since exposure to the arts can help students succeed later in life more so as opposed to those who are not, we are doing ourselves a disservice and weakening an important thread vital to our ecosystem. Another consequence of the devaluation of the arts is that an everyday working artist is often not compensated fairly for their labor, which just perpetuates the issue further.

Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?

As a fine artist, I would do myself a favor to think with an entrepreneurial mind more often, but all the reading I end up doing is to satisfy whatever philosophical curiosity I have at the moment. My favorite inspirational books that I have read this year include The Southern Reach Trilogy by Jeff VanderMeer, Ways of Being: Animals, Plants, Machines: The Search for a Planetary Intelligence by James Bridle, and When Species Meet by Donna Haraway.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://lacey-mckinney.com
• Instagram: @mckinney_lacey

Image Credits
Images courtesy of the artist.