Kathleen Kennedy

Today’s the day for all the hearts!!!
Happy Valentine’s Day 💗💗💗💗💗
To celebrate, here is a new piece from Love & Other Connections:

Manifestation
2025
24k Gold Leaf, Plaster, Foam, Cleats
Heart Charm: 22” x 22” x 9”
18’ Rope Chain

This body of work uses the language of jewelry to trace the invisible threads that connect people. Jewelry serves as both object and metaphor - a tangible manifestation of love, memory, and human connection. Worn close to the body, it occupies both public and private spaces, revealing and concealing meaning in equal measure.
In this series, jewelry is reimagined as sculpture, transforming familiar components - heart charms, lockets, clasps - into larger narratives about relationships and emotion. These forms become stand-ins for people themselves, embodying the fragility, endurance, and complexity of our bonds. Jewelry’s role as a souvenir of connection is amplified and examined, inviting reflection on how we hold, preserve, and sometimes lose one another.
Materiality becomes a language of its own. Nu Gold, a low value base metal designed to imitate gold, is used on precisely pressed heart charms - it’s inevitable tarnish marking time, impermanence, and the illusion of perfection. In contrast, 24k gold leaf is gilded over hand-coated plaster forms, where its luminosity sanctifies imperfection. This interplay between authenticity and artifice, permanence and decay, mirrors the contradictions of intimacy. Ultimately, these works honor the tension between our longing for connection and the ongoing effort to remain true to ourselves.