I'm a High School student in my senior year with a passion for creation. This passsion manifests into a variety of mediums from poetry to robotics -- I try to be versatile in my forms of expression. At the core of all of my energy, is a life commitment to social justice.
Email: julianphillipskennedy@gmail.com
Phone: (617)-524-7090
2020 - This was the largest piece I've ever made. I wanted to tell a story of corruption, love, and protection within the piece and I think that story is even more beautiful when told through my process. That's why I've decided to create a time-lapse of this piece. My favorite part about the time-lapse is being able to see the ink transform as it dries.
2020 - The PanMecca Prison Model was designed in my "Theories of Justice" class in 11th grade. As part of the class, we visited a prison and spoke with inmates. This was a powerful experience for me. I wanted my design to fight back against the systems that drive mass incarceration. I was very intentional about the facilities I designed and made as many as possible managed and owned by inmates for this reason. Another goal of the design was to facilitate restorative justice and I decided to make all facilities open for both inmates and the community to try to accomplish this goal. Additionally, the design would be built in communities most affected by mass incarceration. The design was very inspired by the "Panopticon", often cited as the source of modern penal architecture. The "Panopticon" calls for a central guard tower with cells spiraling around the tower. My design instead calls for a single housing tower in the middle, allowing inmates to look out on the community they are a part of.
2020 - I made this piece perched on a tree at the end of a hike. The COVID-19 Pandemic was still a recent change to our lives and I was thinking a lot about our connection to nature. A connection that we've exploited, corrupted, and ignored. Perched on that tree, I asked myself the bleak question, "Have we destroyed our connection?"
2020 - I really enjoy making abstract black ink art. There's something very powerful to me in making completely unique gradients with just ink and water. This piece tells a story of conflict between two entities. They are on a path to hit each other but they start to self-destruct before impact. They don't realize that if they were to just continue on their path, they would fuse into something even more beautiful and powerful.
2020 - Similar to Fated Conflict, On the Other Side also observes the effects of conflict. How do we make it through conflict? What scars do we carry with us? How are our external surroundings affected? Like many of my pieces, I incorporated a face because I feel that faces are the most natural vessel of emotion.
2019 - Heart Medicine is from a collection of poems I wrote entitled Experimentation with Love. I see poetry as a form of visual art. I channel it from the same place of creativity and my poetry and art are often directly inspired by each other. Additionally, how a poem looks is very important to me and I am very intentional with my lines, punctuation, spacing, and indentation. Experimentation with Love was written as I was struggling to heal from a breakup. At the time, I felt disorientated and broken. I found poetry to be a great outlet for my emotions
Heart Medicine was the first poem I wrote for this collection. It is meant to read as a stream of consciousness and is intentionally formatted as one single sentence.
2019 - The Window in the Sugar Shack is from a collection of poems I wrote entitled Experimentation with Love. I see poetry as a form of visual art. I channel it from the same place of creativity and my poetry and art are often directly inspired by each other. Additionally, how a poem looks is very important to me and I am very intentional with my lines, punctuation, spacing, and indentation. Experimentation with Love was written as I was struggling to heal from a breakup. At the time, I felt disorientated and broken. A found poetry as a great outlet for my emotions.
The Window in the Sugar Shack tells a story from my summer. A window, so to speak, into my emotional state at the time. I was infatuated with love. Love for a girl, love for my friends, and love for a place.
2019 - (In photo): interactive sculpture, color digital print, artist statement, and this text:
Purple and Yellow, Purple and Gold, Matamba Queen, Young and Old. Young Boy, Old Notion, Damaged Truth, Across The Ocean. Western Crown, Pseudonym, Eastern Crown, Synonym. Pose of Prayer, Tagged Facade, Prayer Pose, King God. Gorilla Caged, Gorilla Talking, Bars on Bars, Gorilla Mocking. Our Captivity, Palpable, Our Realization, Impossible. Ali Sword, Ivory Chains, Ali AWOL, Prison Pains. Savage Zulu, Leopard Skin, Civil What, Dolphin Fin. Cries Excuse, Humanity, Cries Help, Profanity.
The Purple and Gold Manifesto was a deep dive into the concept of royalty. Trying to understand its origins, its purpose, and its crimes. Visually, I was inspired by a passage in Ta-Nehisi Coates’ book Between a World and Me about Queen Nzinga. The piece, which can be sat on, resembles a human on their hands and knees.
2019 - Express was a collection of pieces I made tackling topics of, colonialism, appropriation, and occupation. The pieces were an expression of the weight I feel of the White-European history I descend from.
2019 - Express was a collection of pieces I made tackling topics of, colonialism, appropriation, and occupation. The pieces were an expression of the weight I feel of the White-European history I descend from.