109: JUDY KENSLEY MCKIE, Tall Cabinet < The Collection of Sylvia & Garry Knox Bennett, 27 March 2025 < Auctions

When Garry Met Judy

by Glenn Adamson

“A showstopper.” This is how Garry Knox Bennett remembered his first impression of Judy Kensley McKie’s furniture. The encounter occurred in 1979, when both were included in the exhibition New Handmade Furniture at the American Craft Museum (now the Museum of Arts and Design). McKie had only recently started making her signature zoomorphic furniture, and hadn’t yet attained the pneumatic contours that make her work so recognizable. In fact, Bennett was the first studio furniture maker she’d ever met. But he has always had a keen eye, and knew a major talent when he saw one.

Bennett has always had a keen eye, and knew a major talent when he saw one.

It was the beginning of a lifelong friendship. Though separated by a generation (Bennett was ten years older), three time zones, and a big difference in aesthetic approach, they forged an unbreakable alliance. Garry and his wife Sylvia acquired several important works of Judy’s, one of which—a cupboard with a bold harlequin paint job—bears an affectionate inscription on its back.

Judy Kensley McKie’s *Tall Cabinet*, bearing the inscription ‘©JKM 1983 Best wishes to Garry Your Friend, Judy’.

Certainly the best thing that Bennett did for McKie was to get her into bronze casting. “Convincing her was not an easy task,” he said. Not until he had taken it upon himself to hand-deliver a component from a table he owned to his friend Piero Mussi, proprietor of Artworks Foundry in Berkeley, and offer to pay for the mold-making costs in exchange for one piece of the edition, did she finally agree.

No matter what the medium, McKie’s forms are witty, precise, and true. She might have had a lot of help in making these wonderful works; but as Bennett put it, “her lines are all her own.”

Unlike Bennett, who had extensive experience with casting, McKie was presumably wary of relinquishing full artistic control. Once she saw the results, though, she was more than convinced. Not only did she have many works subsequently executed by Mussi and his team, but also went on to collaborate with marble carvers and resin casters. No matter what the medium, her forms are witty, precise, and true. She might have had a lot of help in making these wonderful works; but as Bennett put it, “her lines are all her own.”

I love the idea that you can make a useful object beautiful. For me, that’s the ultimate challenge.

Judy Kensley McKie

Larger Than Life: Garry Knox Bennett

by Glenn Adamson

Garry Knox Bennett was a big man. Big in every way. Tall. Fulsomely bearded. Physically powerful. A veritable Paul Bunyan of furniture, with expansive creativity and curiosity to match. Whatever world he stepped into didn’t quite measure up to him; and so, in the nicest possible way, he had to make it that much more capacious.

Whatever world [Garry] stepped into didn’t quite measure up to him; and so, in the nicest possible way, he had to make it that much more capacious.

That pattern set in early, when, as he put it, “the flower people came to Frisco.” (He was a man of Oakland, with a lifelong suspicion of the fancier sister city across the bay.) Having already gone to art school, initially as a painter and focusing increasingly on sculpture, he now discovered himself as an entrepreneur, starting up a business called Squirkenworks and selling handmade drug paraphernalia at a rapid clip. “God bless the hippies,” he used to say fondly. "They loved anything ugly.”

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