Michael Jones McKean (b. 1976, Truk Island, Micronesia) lives and works in Richmond, VA. He received a MFA from Alfred University, Alfred, NY and a BFA from Marywood University, Scranton, PA. Since 2006 he has taught in the Sculpture and Extended Media Department at Virigina Commonwealth University where he is an Associate Professor.
Functioning as a central location – where things are collected, moved, and absorbed –Michael Jones McKean’s work explores states of in-between-ness; the spaces between experience and perception, understanding and meaning, fantasy and reality, success and failure. Similarly, through his specific and eclectic ordering of materials and techniques, the artist’s work roams in the margins of theater, folklore, science, architecture, mysticism and sculpture itself. For McKean, the gaps between these coordinates become poetically charged spaces, harnessing an unseen valence momentarily bonding disparate objects in crystalline unison. The results of this process create a bridge allowing entrance to a world flickering between meaning, complexity, representation, and materiality. McKean’s manipulation of such pedestrian yet fantastic organic processes as rainbows also demonstrates our innate desire to physically seize and understand the natural world.
