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 Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Using found, mass-produced materials, Coppens constructs sculptural works that exist between object and environment, artifact and interior. Born in California, raised there, as well as in Texas and Massachusetts, their work reflects a life shaped by transience and engages with the ways spaces are built, remembered, and often abandoned.
Coppens treats the visual language of home, fabric, trim, hardware, and 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 and unstable thresholds, blurring the boundaries between two-dimensional surface and object.
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, a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, the Monson Arts Award, and the Marcia Lloyd Auction Award. 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. Through my repetitive process of cutting, assembling, and layering, I leave unique and tangible evidence of every decision. 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 paintings present domestic space 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.