JUDY KENSLEY MCKIE
Judy Kensley McKie is a renowned American designer and maker within the studio furniture movement. Her zoomorphic works are particularly iconic. Consoles that assume the dignified form of horses or cats, light emerging from elegant swan beaks, and tables held aloft by pacing panthers are pieces influenced by Art Deco style with an offbeat charm all their own. Her expertly crafted designs in cast bronze and carved wood achieve a sleek sophistication while also expressing a sense of whimsy.
Self-taught as a furniture maker, McKie graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design with a degree in painting and gained recognition with her inclusion in an exhibition at the American Craft Museum (now the Museum of Arts and Design) in New York, alongside work by contemporaries Wendell Castle and Garry Knox Bennett. She is the recipient of two fellowships from the National Endowment of the Arts, a Massachusetts Artist Foundation fellowship, and the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award. Her work is part of the permanent collections of many museums including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
