VESSELS & FOLDS: PHOTOGRAPHS BY DENNIS KIERNAN

A posthumous conversation between grandmother, mother, and son in celebration of Pride Month

Dennis Kiernan shot this group of nine still-life photos—sumptuous arrangements of domestic objects—during the last year of his life, while he struggled with memory loss and battled brain cancer. The assemblage represents a love affair with color, shape, composition—and family. 

The fabric that serves as backdrop in all the photos was designed by his mother, Alice, and some of the objects were passed down from Thompson’s Antiques, a shop owned by Dennis’ grandmother Bertha Thompson in Jay, Maine. Dennis spent many formative years of his childhood with Bertha in Maine while Alice, newly divorced, worked as a fabric designer in the Edith Reuss Studio in Manhattan.

Astute lighting renders the undulations of fabric and the reflective quality of various forms of ceramic and glass objects three-dimensional. In addition to the art pottery, green glass, and McCoy which Dennis collected, his eye found vessels in unconventional objects, too.

The photograph of his cowboy boots was a signature piece for him. Shot in black and white, with three wilting zinnia blooms thrown over their toes, they are a potent symbol of his coming out, at age 40, in the AIDS-ridden 80s, and the flower-power movement he was embracing late in life.

This is Dennis’s second solo show and first posthumous solo show.