Artist Biography
Mollie McKinley is an interdisciplinary artist based in the Hudson Valley. She uses photography, light, glass, and sculpture to materialize the ethereal and visceral aspects of nature consciousness. McKinley’s work has been shown at Turley Gallery, Asya Geisberg Gallery, Roundabouts Now, Fridman Gallery, The Contemporary Jewish Museum, NADA Foreland, Pioneer Works, UrbanGlass, Independent Curators International, The Samuel Dorsky Museum at SUNY New Paltz, The Museum of Arts and Design, Anthology Film Archives, and many others. She is a contributor to How-To Kit, published by the Walker Art Center in collaboration with the Dia Art Foundation, and her critical art writing is featured in Peer Review Vol. 3. She was awarded an Arts & Culture Grant from the New York State Legislature for her 2025 project Gloop Entity, administered by Arts Mid-Hudson, and is the recipient of the 2025 BigCi International Environmental Art Award (Bilpin, NSW, Australia), where she will undertake a site-specific project in Wollemi National Park in spring 2026. She has been awarded fellowships and residencies at Wheaton Arts (fellowship in glass), Light Work, The Marble House Project, and Normalize Talking to the Dead: Cultivation of Communication with the Unseen. McKinley holds a BA in photography from Bard College, and an MFA in sculpture/dimensional studies from Alfred University.
Land Acknowledgement
Much of my work is made in collaboration with the lands of the Hudson Valley and Catskill Mountains. These landscapes are traditional territories of the Lenni-Lenape people, a land called “Lenapehoking.” I acknowledge the Lenni-Lenape as the original people of this land, and their continuing relationship with their territory. In the continued presence of Lenape people in their homeland, I affirm the aspiration of the great Lenape Chief Tamanend: that there be harmony between the indigenous people of this land and the descendants of the immigrants to this land, “as long as the rivers and creeks flow, and the sun, moon, and stars shine.”
I’d also like to acknowledge and honor the role of traditional Haudenosaunee lands and its people, known as the Keepers of the Western Door, where I developed my work in relationship to that landscape during 2020-2022.
All content on this site is copyright Mollie McKinley 2010-2025.