Bio
Kailey Coppens is a multimedia artist who examines the emotional architecture of domestic space through a materially driven, process-oriented practice. They studied Painting and Interdisciplinary Media at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Using found, mass-produced materials and repeated acts of cutting, assembling, and framing, Coppens constructs sculptural works that exist between object and environment, artifact and interior. Their work reflects a life shaped by transience—over sixteen homes in twenty-seven years—and engages with the ways spaces are built, remembered, and often abandoned.
Coppens treats the visual language of home—fabric, trim, hardware, framing—as a vocabulary for fragmentation and repair. Repetition functions not only as a method of making but as a tool for processing memory, disorientation, and return. Their sculptural environments reference flattened rooms, fractured corners, and unstable thresholds, blurring the boundaries between shelter and surface.
Their work has been exhibited nationally at institutions including the Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts (TN), Overlap Gallery (RI), and A Space Gallery (NY), and has been featured in international publications. Coppens is the recipient of the Evelyn Claywell Absher Award for Abstract Art, the Rauschenberg Medical Emergency Grant, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, the Monson Arts Award, and the Marcia Lloyd Auction Award (all 2025). They live and work in Olneyville, Providence, where they maintain a studio practice and work as a teaching artist and picture framer.
Statement
In my art practice, I explore the relationships between mass-produced items and the structural surroundings of a home, using found materials to create sculptures and paintings. Having moved frequently—over sixteen homes and apartments in the past twenty-seven years—I reflect on the spaces I’ve had to leave behind.
I am drawn to the colors, patterns, and materials that persist even as the walls around them change. I engage in repeated acts of cutting, assembling, and framing. Repetition helps me process memory, disorientation, and the act of return. I consider how everyday objects are collected, stored, presented, or used—and how unassuming items take on individual narratives in the domestic realm.
My sculptural interiors reference flattened interiors, fractured patterns, and unstable thresholds, revealing how domestic space can serve as containers of memories and narratives. My goal is to initiate a conversation about how we unconsciously curate our living spaces by reimagining the function of everyday household materials.