Review: Cassie Kerns at Indy Indie
by Dan Grossman
As you enter the Indy Indie Art Gallery, you come across Cassie Kerns’ text scrawled in longhand: “As long as we create, we’re alive.” On the other side of this structure on which this text is written, you come across a painting “Rescue Mission” which lends a sense of urgency to this written statement and is evidently autobiographical. It’s a starkly rendered mixed media painting showing a nude woman facing forward, her eyes blind-folded, her ankles in chains and her neck in a noose.
Cassie Kerns was a forward on the University of Connecticut basketball team; she earned a painting and photography major at the university in 2010. She works in a variety of media, including diary excerpts, collage, audio installation, painting, and photography.
In the collage work, you see cutouts of characters from children’s books against a variety of found paintings. In “Spirit,” you see a white cutout unicorn like a symbol of power against the backdrop of a found painting that depicts a mountainous landscape. You also see the legs of a girl in bobby socks sticking up from the ground.
Much of this work is raw and unpolished — that of a young artist finding her way — but it there is a sense of seriousness and urgency to all of it. What’s more, the rawness seems utterly necessary. Kerns is channeling the cathartic power of art here to overcome deeply personal trauma.
Related Locations
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Indy Indie Artist Colony
- 26 E. 14th St., Indianapolis Downtown IN 46202
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317-919-8725
- www.indyindieartist.com
- (based on 5 user reviews)
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