For Judy Kensley McKie, each work begins with a drawing. The act of drawing is essential to reaching the meditative, almost mysterious state where she believes her best ideas emerge. As she explains, “I enter a place where, it’s not a dream state, but it’s a mysterious place. Each drawing allows me to let go a little more and sink a little deeper into what you describe as the bottom of the pond.” For McKie, creation is not about executing conscious intentions or defined concepts but rather about tapping into the subconscious. “I don’t let go easily,” she continues, “so it takes a while to get there. The longer I draw, the closer I get to that place, and when I get there, the ideas look simpler and simpler. They are more truthful.” This pursuit of truth through simplicity, while deceptively modest, belies a deep well of intention and experience. What could be mistaken for naivety is, in fact, the product of years of discipline, introspection, and the honing of a distinct artistic voice. 

McKie never received formal training in furniture making. She earned a BFA in painting from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1966, never once setting foot in the school’s woodshop. Still, the foundations were in place: her father, a woodworker, made sure she understood the basics from an early age. After college, short on money for furniture, McKie returned to those skills to build practical pieces for her home. At first, her work was purely utilitarian. But as friends began requesting pieces of their own, she began to see furniture-making as a potential outlet for creative expression. 

Throughout the 1970s, McKie began to explore the expressive potential of functional design. Drawing on diverse influences—including Pre-Columbian, African, and Native American art—she began incorporating motifs from the natural world into her work. Early pieces featured painted or carved geometric and botanical forms arranged in simple, repeating patterns. Over time, her visual language evolved. The motifs grew bolder, more zoomorphic. In a remarkable leap of imagination, decorative elements no longer sat atop the surface but merged seamlessly with the structure and function of each piece. Animals and plants did not merely embellish the work—they became it. A monkey might sit sentinel atop a bench, its tail curling to form the seat back. A jaguar might stand proudly, its slender back forming a console top. 

McKie’s forays into furniture design began to attract wider attention in the late 1970s. A pivotal moment came in 1979, when she was included in New Handmade Furniture at the American Craft Museum in New York. It was in this context that fellow exhibitor Garry Knox Bennett first encountered her work, later describing it as “a showstopper.” At the time, McKie was still refining the visual language that would come to define her mature style: her signature animalistic forms were just beginning to emerge, and the sensuous, sculptural contours now characteristic of her work were not yet fully realized. Nonetheless, Bennett—already an established figure in the studio furniture movement—immediately recognized the originality and power of her vision. 

This meeting would spark a lifelong creative relationship between the two artists. It was Bennett who urged McKie to explore bronze casting, a process she initially resisted. She dismissed his suggestion at first, but after seeing the results produced by Bennett’s friend Piero Mussi, proprietor of Artworks Foundry in Berkeley, McKie was convinced. That her forms translate so seamlessly across mediums is a testament to the strength of her artistic imagination. McKie’s carved wood pieces radiate warmth and playfulness, but in bronze, that same spirit deepens, tempered by the quiet gravity and timeless resonance the material imparts. 

The present Fish bench exemplifies this balance between exuberance and solemnity. There is a watchfulness to McKie’s bronzes, as if each piece quietly observes its surroundings. From the bottom of the pond, McKie draws out her most truthful ideas—those that, once cast in bronze, feel both alive and eternal. The vitality of the natural world is preserved not only in form but in the essence of movement and stillness, strength and grace. Like the best of her bronzes, this bench maintains a delicate tension between the playful energy and the profound stillness the medium evokes, creating the impression that it is a sentinel, watching over its surroundings with a quiet, enduring presence.