“Blainey creates graphic, imaginary shapes and designs with an other-worldly eye. She uses bright, often shocking colors to convey a ‘saturated’ quality to the images, as if they are wearing a costume. Often, her drawings are created with a vision of becoming a life-sized sculpture.”

—Abby Amols

BIO

A New Orleans native and daughter of the float builder Blaine Kern, Blainey Kern grew up immersed in Mardi Gras culture and her family’s business. As a child, she played among the floats alongside painters, sculptors and builders, built papier-mâché props, worked with fiberglass, clay and plastics. Blainey honors her heritage in her use of materials and color palette.

Blainey received her masters degree in Sculpture from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). Her work has been exhibited in the International Sculpture Conference, Market House Gallery, the Sculpture Biennial at the Woods Gerry Gallery, and the Sol Koffler Gallery in Providence, RI.  In addition, she was awarded a residency to the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and a full scholarship to the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA. During this period, Blainey also produced a number of films, including “Nourish” and “Maintenance Control” which won best short in the New York Exposition of Short Film and Video. She also introduces live performative pieces to her works, complimenting and highlighting her art. Her films and artworks have been exhibited at Mobius Video Space in Boston, MA, the deCordova Museum in Lincoln, MA, Jonathan Ferrara Gallery, Nadine Blake and The New Orleans Academy of Fine Art in New Orleans.

Currently she is living and working on her art and teaches children's art classes at Trinity and NOAFA in New Orleans. Blainey's focus includes sculpture, collage/mixed media, drawing, video and performance pieces.

ARTIST STATEMENT

My work is a tactile, immersive embrace of female existence. An interdisciplinary artist, I use a range of materials to explore the joy, sensuality and physical reality of the female body juxtaposed against its commodification by consumer culture.

To this work I bring my life experience. As the daughter of New Orleans float-builder Blaine Kern, my childhood was saturated by carnival customs. I grew up playing on floats alongside painters, sculptors and builders, surrounded by the joys of fantasy and excessive celebration. With that, however, came embedded ideas about stereotypical beauty, ornamentation, gender performance. I had a front row seat to the manufacturing of identity and normalization of falseness. 

Working from my home studio, I draw upon the traditions of carnival — costumes, masks and performance — and its associated materials — paper maché, ceramics, video, saturated color, feathers, plastics, glue, glitter, vintage magazines and mass-produced objects — to seduce the viewer into a world that explores the suppression of authenticity and identity. The result is often confusing and intentionally uncomfortable. For example, in one installation, round, voluptuous, color-saturated sculptures —“She-Bombs”— playfully lean against one another, engaging the viewer in their fun. Upon reflection, however, the viewer realizes they are plasticized, mass-produced objects on display, inviting touch. This tension between the celebration of femininity and suppression of individuality infuses my artist practice.