The Leighed Table, 2024

The Leighed Table is a table setting where each piece of tableware draws inspiration from the etymological roots of reproductive anatomy. The name, “getting Leighed,” nods to the infamous Everleigh brothel of 19th-century Chicago. Plates are modeled after placentas, the Greek word meaning “flat plate.” Drinking horns mimic fallopian tubes, referencing the mistranslation of the Italian tuba as “horn”. The centerpiece, inspired by the Latin pelvis, meaning "basin", anchors the table arrangement. Chicken eggs symbolize "ovum", and mulberries for the Latin "morula", represent 16 cells stage of fetal development. The moss placemats reflect the root of embryonic as “in moss” and oversized candlesticks evoke ovaries.

By drawing on Renaissance anatomical discoveries and the formal language of Renaissance still life painting, The Leighed Table critiques how scientific abstraction analogizes “female” reproductive organs with domestic tableware, exposing language shapes our understanding of the body.

Cumulus, 2017

Permanent public art installation at the Foundation Hotel, Detroit, MI.

‍Press

Mention, American Craft
Mention, CrainsDetroit.com
Mention, Forbes.com
Mention, AmericanRoads.net

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To Touch the Sky with Two Arms

Exhibition with Brian Caponi at Holding House, Detroit MI

To Touch The Sky With Two Arms is an exhibition of the works of Kim Harty and Brian Caponi that explores a variety of media in an effort to make the intangible tangible. Both artists exhibit a nuanced and poetic approach toward recording objects and images which often remain just out of reach: light and shadow, a sense of home, memory, or celestial bodies. The work on display highlights the relationship between materials, images and individuals exhibited in fragments.

Spill, 2015

Glass, baking soda, hardware, dimensions variable

Included in:
2016 Cosmologies exhibition at Center Galleries, Detroit, MI
2015 Scaped, A+D Gallery, Chicago, IL

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Spill monumentalizes fleeting, intimate, and incidental moments, the spills quickly cleaned, wiped away, and erased. The material of glass becomes an ambiguous substance, referencing intimate liquids, both bodily fluids and cleaning substances. The sprawling installation makes an analogy between these personal, intimate, often invisible, fluids and the grandiose snapshot of our galaxy, the Milky Way."