Come With Us a Tiny Magical Village!

By Spun Counterguy on August 27, 2014

Ever wanted to just create your own town to live in? Rita Kennedy is an artist who’s done just that, albeit on a miniature scale. The artist took a little time from town building to take the Brophisticate on a tour of her world.

On a nice sunny day the King woke up, opened the window and looked outside. “This place is awfully boring!” he muttered between two yawns. “I am tired of the same old walls!” No sooner said than done, he called the Chamberlain and declared: “I have decided that a brand new castle should be built for the Court. I want you to look far and wide for the finest architect of all. – From Rita Kennedy’s Felicia and the King

Brophisticate: How did you decide upon your present medium of ceramics?

Rita Kennedy: In 1982, while studying art in Santa Monica College, I took several classes in ceramics, and discovered that I had quite a wild imagination when it came to unusual and humorous houses. And I wanted to convey the feeling that I once had when traveling in Turkey. I was with a group of friends, and we were driving through the Turkish countryside. I fell asleep in the car, and when I suddenly woke up I saw the most amazing sight. We were driving through a village, and the dusty ground had exactly the same color as the houses. The small houses had been built with the same material as the ground, and they looked like they were part of the landscape and not houses at all.

In the end my houses were the color of terracotta, but the landscape I painted around it was colorful, full of greenery and a lake, so I suppose I did not convey the same feeling I had that day, but I hope that the houses did give a magical feeling of something out of the ordinary and homogeneous even in its diversity.

Is there a story about the town you’ve created, who lives there, any adventures, etc?

Yes,there are a few stories about the funny city and its inhabitants.

I gave the characters names of colors (Magenta, a little girl, and Silverine, a fairy), fruits (Peri and Melina, both from Italian, pear and little apple), planets (Neptune), feelings (Felicia). Neptune is a painter who lives in two rooms on the top of the mastodontic castle-house. The two rooms are on the top of each other; his bedroom is in the top room, his studio is in the bottom room. The only problem is that to go from one place of the castle to another, namely the library, people had to go through Neptune’s studio. Neptune complained a lot about it, but in reality he liked it. He liked his friends to go by and sit quietly for a while watching him work, he liked the company and human breath on his shoulders.

I wrote these stories- which are really children’s fables- more than 26 years ago. [That was] so long ago, that I typed these stories with a typewriter! It seems ancient history now!

Were the stories for you characters inspired by your everyday life?

Yes, but not so much by specific events, as by the awareness of feelings and subtle interactions among people, sometimes by feelings inside my family as I was growing up.

(One of Kennedy’s paintings of her created world)

Even though you have been in the States for many years, you originally are from Italy. Do you find that your Italian upbringing affects your creative process in any obvious or differing way?

I am sure that everything in my life is interrelated, but I arrived to the US 35 years ago, and all my experience as an artist was influenced by the art schooling that started in the US, by my art teachers and the art shows I attended, and the friendships here in the US. As far as the whimsical and child-like nature of my houses and stories, I think that it was deeply affected by the children’s stories that I read as a child, by the fairy tales, the stories my mother used to tell, and by my tendency to day dream and imagine fun and gentle made-up adventures. Yes, these adventures sometimes had hardships and troubles, but the general theme was one of optimism and resolution.

I also had an attraction to nature as a source of inspiration and healing. As children and adolescents, every summer my mother took us either to the seaside or into the Alps. She rented a house and we would spend there our summer vacation. These memories are some of the fondest of my young life. More than by the architecture and the beautiful art of Italy, I have been affected by the tall mountains and the white beaches. This is a recurrent theme in my art. The village I designed is surrounded by nature, many of my paintings depict strange, even improbable landscapes.

What goals do you have for yourself and your work over the next few years?

Tentatively, I would like to develop or import a technique where I can make larger houses that could be set in a garden environment without danger of destruction by the elements.

Another possible direction would be to transcribe my short stories, which right now are written in long hand, edit them and work on illustrations for them, which will undoubtedly incorporate my funny houses.

Check out Rita’s town via www.ritacortini.com