User:PericlesofAthens/Sandbox Deborah Kennedy (artist)

Deborah Kennedy (born 1953) is an American author, educator and artist whose work has focused primarily on environmental advocacy and ecological concerns. She also lectures on art and art history at the Santa Clara University and San Jose City College. She has received attention in media for her art projects, most notably along the Berlin Wall before its fall in November 1989.

Personal life
Deborah Kennedy was born in Connecticut in 1953. She received her BA on the Practice of Art in 1983 from the University of California, Berkeley and her MFA on Plastic Arts in 1987 from the San Jose State University. She lives in San Jose, California with her husband Dale Larson, and has previously lived with him in Germany.

Career
Kennedy's project at the Berlin Wall installed in April 1989 involving copper and brass collages with inscriptions sharing hopes and fears of Germans and Americans was covered by the San Jose Mercury News for its impact on the local community and how it allowed communication between East and West Berliners. Kennedy was assisted by the Checkpoint Charlie Museum along with political activist Ranier Hildebrant in mounting her work on the wall under the scrutiny of East German patrol guards. With the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, Kennedy's art was also taken down and collected at least in part as souvenirs by locals.

During the mid-1990s, Kennedy received a California Arts Council grant for a project working with minors to produce graffiti murals. In 1997 she was awarded an Artist's Fellowship for Installation Arts from the Arts Council Silicon Valley. In that same year she completed work on the public sculpture entitled EcoTech featured at the Champion Light Rail Station in San Jose. From September 1999 to March 2000, Kennedy's artworks were featured at the De Saisset Museum of the Santa Clara University for her exhibition titled Nature Speaks: Environmental Installations by Deborah Kennedy.

Kennedy was commissioned by the San Jose Public Art Program to work alongside sculptor Diana Pumpelly Bates in 2004 on completion of a community project for the Coyote Creek Trail recreational area of San Jose and Santa Clara County, California. Their public artworks, including Kennedy's 'Ripple Effect', are used to promote public awareness of a concrete landing pad and ramp leading to a levee where strollers, wheelchairs, and bicyclists have greater accessibility to the site.

In 2016 Kennedy published Nature Speaks: Art and Poetry for the Earth (White Cloud Press). It won the 2017 Eric Hoffer and Silver Nautilus poetry book awards for its use of combined visual art and poetry highlighting natural and ecological themes.

Kennedy currently teaches art and art history at the Santa Clara University and San Jose City College.