Marianna Kennedy

Bilingual edition Ita/EngMarianna Kennedy has been working for over twenty-five years in her London home-studio creating a limited number of artistic design pieces, each the result of months of collaboration with Britain's finest craftsmen. In her creative practice, the use of traditional techniques has always coexisted with a highly contemporary aesthetic vision. Known and appreciated internationally, her work has become part of prestigious private collections. This publication is dedicated to the site-specific work created for the Luigi Rovati Foundation Art Museum, and is part of a new series of monographs on important contemporary artists who have collaborated with the Foundation. As Above So Below is a mirror consisting of thirty-eight individual pieces with a distinctive pinkish hue, mounted within a rich, floral decorated frame of carved wood. Representing the cycle of nature, the bottom part of the mirror reproduces the material world, with rocks and caves, while the plant elements that furrow its surface symbolize the ascent to the spiritual world, to light, to infinity. Interviewed by Ben Weaver, Kennedy traces the history of the commission of the large mirror, from the original inspiration to its evolution, listing all the craftsmen involved. The publication is enriched by an essay by Dan Cruickshank on the history of British carving in 18th-century architecture and decorative arts, the differences with Continental carving, and the legacy of that practice, which is an inexhaustible source of inspiration for Kennedy.