Sarah McEneaney and Lydia Ricci: The Extra Ordinary

Over the centuries, artists have often drawn inspiration from their homes and the objects of everyday life. For The Extra Ordinary, on view now at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, artists Sarah McEneaney and Lydia Ricci have similarly tapped their personal spaces.

The Extra Ordinary, which runs through February 26, 2023, highlights the often-overlooked potential in the ordinary objects and events that animate and populate commonplace routines through paintings, small-scale sculptures, and an animated video.

Through McEneaney’s daily practice of meticulously painting images of her home and studio, and the happenings within those spaces, she examines the rich opportunities for reflection that abound around us. She, and her ever-present pets, inhabit a lushly colored and detailed haven where activities and events such as drinking water and a rainstorm unfold into poetic moments of meaning.

Ricci’s miniature objects, made from hoarded paper and cardboard, act as stand-ins for emotionally charged experiences and relationships. Their diminutive scale provides a safe distance for contemplation of the difficult situations or memories they contain. Ricci gives the sculptures lives of their own in a series of stop-motion animations, imagining them interacting in a slew of absurd but serious situations.

Both artists’ bodies of work cohere into entire worlds—full of characters, drama, and plot twists—from the (un)limited surroundings of their homes and studios.

Sarah McEneaney works as an artist and community activist in Philadelphia. She received her certificate from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1979. That same year, McEneaney was included in her first gallery show, Philadelphia New Talent at Locks Gallery.

Since then, she has had solo museum shows at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia; Mills College Art Museum, CA; and the List Gallery, Swarthmore College, PA. She has been in over 70 group shows throughout the Mid-Atlantic region and had consistent solo exhibitions in New York and Philadelphia over the last 20 years.

McEneaney is the recipient of the Yaddo Fellowship (2006, 2005, 1997, 1995), the Pew Fellowship in the Arts (2002, 2001, 1993), the Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant (2000), and the MacDowell Colony Fellowship (1998), among others. Her work is in numerous public collections including the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, and the Mills College Art Museum.

Lydia Ricci spends most of her time making tiny sculptures of everyday objects “from scraps” of daily existence. Her fragmentary 3-D collages have been widely published and exhibited at galleries in New York, San Francisco, and Philadelphia. When she’s not creating vintage typewriters from cereal box lids and floppy disks, Lydia teaches courses in branding, design, and storytelling at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia.

Lydia is a graduate of Carnegie Mellon University and has studied in St Gallen, Switzerland, and Cortona, Italy. She lives outside Philadelphia.

Admission to the John Michael Kohler Arts Center is free. Sarah McEneaney and Lydia Ricci: The Extra Ordinary is part of JMKAC’s Ways of Being , a series of exhibitions, programs, and performances exploring the role of artists as world-builders who can help us navigate the present, re-orient the past, and project viable futures.

Ways of Being is supported by the Kohler Trust for Arts and Education, the Frederic Cornell Kohler Charitable Trust, Kohler Foundation, Inc., and the Wisconsin Arts Board with funds from the State of Wisconsin and the National Endowment for the Arts.