KIERAN KINSELLA

february 7 - march 8, 2026

‘Kieran Kinsella does not consider himself a formally trained artist. Not having had experience in art history, he modestly and thoughtfully says he’s still trying to figure out the relationship between the materials he uses and their artistic significance, which he increasingly believes says a lot about what art truly is.

He has based himself in a rural community that he has said affords him the space and solitude to produce the sculptures and furniture he creates with hand and power tools — typically small tables and stools that are cut, shaped and fired out of sections of locally-sourced logs of maple, walnut and other hard woods of varying colors and grains. His “stumps,” as they are often called, are sumptuous objets d’art that with their various textured and polished forms... Each piece dramatically reveals its own personality, which is viscerally gratifying to the senses... Kinsella uses all kinds of locally sourced and salvaged wood. By salvaged he means that, if he can find wood through a tree service or from a place where the logs are just going to be used for firewood, “that’s my favorite to use, because it’s rescue wood; I mean, the most pleasing discovery for me is wood that was just in a firewood pile or what the tree service was going to put in their log dump,” — though he refrains from calling himself a “dumpster diver” for every piece he creates. Repurposing salvaged wood is what he considers an homage to nature.’- Chris Hartman / Upstate Diary