Karen McCoy is Professor Emerita of Sculpture and Social Practice at the Kansas City Art Institute, where she taught for twenty-six years, from 1994 until her retirement in 2020, and served as Department Chair for a decade. Teaching, mentoring, and studio-based research were central to her teaching practice, alongside an active career as a sculptor. She received her Master of Fine Arts degree from the Art Institute of Chicago in 1978. Prior to joining KCAI, she held faculty positions at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, and at Colby College in Waterville, Maine. McCoy’s practice is grounded in extensive research into ecological conditions and the natural, cultural, and social histories of specific places. She is particularly interested in how human systems intersect with and alter landscapes over time. Her work centers on large-scale, site-responsive sculpture that investigates the relationship between nature and culture. Information is gathered through research, site visits, walking the landscape or urbanscape, collecting materials, discussion with community members, and the artist’s own visual response to site and context. Projects range from site-specific sculpture and installations to drawings, prints, photographs, videos, and sensory-based “walking art” and often include elements that grow, develop, or otherwise change form over time, echoing natural systems.
A significant recent work was created for the Personal Structures exhibition by invitation from the European Cultural Center for the Venice Biennale. Installed at Giardini della Marinaressa in Venice, Italy, Giardino Galleggiante per Venezia: Ma I Vermi Vivranno? (Floating Garden for Venice: But Will the Worms Live?), Version 2, addresses the fragility of ecological systems in the face of climate change, rising waters, and human intervention. The work reflects McCoy’s ongoing commitment to research-driven, place-based practice that merges sculpture, environmental inquiry, and social history as it presents a worm-shaped woven garden growing salt-tolerant edible plants that emerge and mature over the course of the exhibition and are available for tasting by the participating audience present in the garden.
While on sabbatical in 2014, McCoy attended and presented her work at the Soil Culture Forum at Falmouth University in the United Kingdom and was invited to participate in Footwork, the research group of the Walking Artists Network, at the Centre for Alternative Technology in Wales. In addition to large-scale sculptural work, her practice and teaching have included Walking Art projects since 2013. Most recently, the Amplifying the Senses Walk at Langlais Art Preserve in Cushing, Maine (2025) and Sensory Walks for Venice, Italy (2024) explored forest and urban environments with special attention to listening and close observation. Other recent projects have included Sound and Sight Walks in New York City’s Central Park in collaboration with Walk Exchange New York and Parsons New School, as well as work presented in Delphi, Greece at the Made of Walking Symposium. Her work has been exhibited throughout the United States and internationally across Europe and Asia.
McCoy has received numerous awards and honors, including the Charlotte Street Visual Artist Award in 2017. That same year, she was named Visual Artist for the Land Institute, where she created a site-specific collaborative exhibition and walking-based project for Prairie Fest. She received the Kansas City Art Institute Special Project Award in 2015 and the Distinguished Achievement Award in 2011. In 2007, she was awarded a three-month grant from the Asian Cultural Council to conduct research in Japan examining relationships between culture, landscape, and built form. Additional support includes participation in the Creative Capital Professional Development Program, sponsored by the Kansas City Metropolitan Arts Council, Charlotte Street Foundation, and the Mid-America Arts Alliance. She has also received support from the Andy Warhol Foundation through the Camargo Foundation for a three-month residency in Cassis, France, as well as from ArtsLink and partners in support of a collaborative project at Europos Parkas in Lithuania. Her artist residencies and fellowships include the Ucross Foundation in Wyoming, Youkobo and Tokyo Wonder Site in Tokyo, through the Asian Cultural Council; Kala Art Institute in Berkeley, California; Randolph-Macon Woman’s College in Lynchburg, Virginia; and the Djerassi Foundation, with a Pritzker Foundation Endowed Fellowship, in Woodside, California.
McCoy’s work has been reviewed in Sculpture Magazine, The New York Times, The Dallas Times Herald, and The Philadelphia Inquirer, among others. Her work has been discussed in publications including Ways to Wander by Claire Qualman and Clare Hind, World of Art by Henry Sayre, Gardens without Boundaries by Paul Cooper, Earthworks and Beyond by John Beardsley, and Landscape Narratives by Matthew Potteiger and Jamie Purinton. Additional writing on her work has appeared in Lake, Land Forum Magazine, The Land Report, and Art and Design: Art and the Natural Environment. Her work is held in the Oppenheimer Collection at the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art in Overland Park, Kansas, where it is featured in the collection catalogue.