Bones Gallery

Bones Installations
Osage Artist in Residency
I was the Artist in Residence for four months at the Osage Arts Community. The Osage Arts Community is a working farm on 165 acres of land in Bell, Missouri that provides time, space, and support for the creation of new work in a retreat format. I spent my time there collecting, cleaning, and casting bones while learning about the interdependence of life and death in nature. These are some of the installations I created during my residency:

Bones Installations
Osage Artist in Residency

Frankendeer and Fred
This installation, which was erected at the Huntington Museum of Art in West Virginia, was influenced by our fading relationship with nature. I collected deer carcasses from highways and assembled the bones into new representations of the animals, as if attempting to bring them back to life. The juxtaposition of the skeletons, created from multiple animals who had perished on the highways, with the beautiful natural setting at the Museum reflects the neglect and sorrow of a changing world that considers animals and nature as collateral damage in the quest for human progress.

www.hmoa.org/art/exhibition/courtyard-series-aaron-kent-bones

Bronze Bone Sculptures
Bones Untitled
These bronze castings were all created at Casting Arts and Technology, a bronze foundry in Cincinnati, OH. They explore the human relationship with nature through the use of repetitive patterns in the form of bones collected directly from the natural world. My interest in the concept of death supporting life led me to begin collecting bones at a young age, and later this interest became the basis for my sculptural pieces. The idea that new life is generated from the process of death and decay became the cornerstone of my body of work. My choice to sculpt in bronze was driven by my desire to use a natural element that was derived from the earth and would one day be reclaimed as well. Bronze itself must complete its own metamorphosis in order to become the finished piece, and by its very nature compliments the cyclical concept behind my work.

Bronze Bone Sculptures
Bones Untitled

Plaster Bone Sculptures
Bones Untitled

Screen Printed images

These screen printed works of art were all created in the DIY Printing studio. They explore the human relationship with nature through the use of repetitive patterns in the form of natural imagery. Trees, earth, bones, and root systems reveal multiple layers that are both visible and invisible to us in nature, opening us up to the beauty that the cycle of death can bring to the living world. As much as we try to remove ourselves from this constant circle, we are inevitably caught up in it as our world dies and is reborn all around us.