Witness Mark
Published by Saint Lucy Books
2023
230 Pages
Hardcover
Vellum Dust Jacket
2 Gatefolds
Texts by Corey Keller, Vanessa Kauffman Zimmerly, Leah Ollman, and Klea McKenna
Witness Mark brings together five bodies of work (made from 2013-2019) that trace an arc of experimentation and a near spiritual commitment to deep observation of the world around us; from the intricate patterns of nature to the labored and intrinsically flawed patterns made by human hands. Beginning with Rain Studies and Web Studies, photograms made outdoors at night in the darkness of the Hawaiian rainforest, McKenna coaxes analog black and white photographic materials to record evidence of broken patterns in detail beyond what is familiar to our eyes, the prisms of light inside each raindrop and the damaged architecture of a spider’s web.
McKenna’s intense physical process of embossing photographic paper into textures in the landscape is evidenced in the series Automatic Earth, which are “photographic rubbings” of the rings of trees, and Faultlines created with the ruptures, imperfections and physical scars of history written onto the landscape. Generation is a series of “photographic reliefs” made using a giant etching press in total darkness to emboss textiles into photographic paper. These objects are rich with touch, their patterns and flaws telling stories of colonialism, migration, and women’s labor and sexuality.
The Olive Orchard
Limited edition artist book
Published in 2022
Limited Edition of 230 signed copies
70 pages
Softcover
Hand sewn with magenta thread
Essay by the artist
This deeply personal artist book uses simple collages to weave together photographs, photograms and paintings, all made at a farm in Sicily. It is a place that I have returned to four times over a 20-year period; each time at a very different stage in my life and relationships. The ancient olive orchard there has become a touchstone for me, a place that puts my own story into perspective in a landscape that hums with deep time. Although my visits have been reoccurring and gradual, this book was made as an impulsive gesture. It is a playful and sometimes chaotic way to give visual form to my own reckoning with time, love, motherhood and the ways we are tethered to one another.
Generation
Limited edition artist book
Published in 2018
Second Edition of 200 signed copies
32 pages
Unique textured covers made from the gelatin silver photographic paper test-strips generated by the making of this body of work.
This artist book was originally made in 2018 to accompany the work in two exhibitions titled Generation. It shares my research into the history, origins and popular perception of six of the many textiles I worked with while making the photographic reliefs in this body of work. Through short essays and collages of reference images, I chronicle my own engagement with these artifacts and the many stories they tell of migration, colonialism, and women’s labor and sexuality.
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Chosen by Art in America Magazine as a "Best Photography Book of 2018"
“What matters to Klea McKenna registers immediately when you take her book, Generation, into your hands. For her, touch is on a par with vision. Surface and image are inextricable. McKenna works in the dark, embossing light-sensitized paper through pressured contact with objects, then exposing the textured sheets to the raking beam of a flashlight. In the past, she has made such “photographic rubbings” using the cross-sections of trees; in Generation, she uses different types of handmade fabrics, from a fringed Spanish shawl to an embroidered Pakistani dress. Some of these photograms are included in the book, along with a text in which McKenna reflects on the material history and intimate use of the textiles. Also included are montages of reference photographs, old and new, ethnographic, cinematic, and vernacular. Like the fabrics, like skin, the book’s cover has a distinct life—the cover of my copy will not look or feel like the cover of yours, since a unique one has been created from the residue of the making of the work for each edition in the limited print run. In case we needed the prompt, the inside back cover is stamped with the directive: FEEL ME.” —Leah Ollman (Art Critic for the LA Times)
The Butterfly Hunter
Limited edition artist book
Edition of 480 signed copies
Published in 2008
80+ color plates of specimens, old snapshots and field maps
Introduction by Klea McKenna
A previously unpublished short story by Terence McKenna
Hardcover, linen bound
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“In The Butterfly Hunter Klea McKenna creates a photographic archive of her father's butterfly collection, hunted and preserved nearly forty years ago. The images display delicate butterflies framed by faded and stained newspapers, magazines, letters, and manuscripts—materials McKenna's father used as envelopes to hold his findings. The headlines and fragmented news stories paint a conflicted portrait of the era. Each image holds narratives that are at once personal and historical. McKenna has used this unique material to create a moving and relevant piece.” – Adrienne Skye Roberts, writer and curator
“A remarkable visual meditation on time, loss, and the culture of nature, ‘The Butterfly Hunter’ is also a cool but intimate engagement with Terence McKenna's fanatical romanticism. It is a mark of Klea McKenna's courage that she has taken on the legacy of a man so concerned with his own legacy, and a mark of her success that she does it with such candor and care. This beautifully produced book is, as Terence himself would deeply appreciate, an artifact of wonder.” – Erik Davis, author of The Visionary State & Techgnosis