Back to Main Page

Expressing a long term interest in the arts, Kirk McCoy began creating his first Pop-Surrealist Modified Ready-mades while a development engineer in the hi-tech field during the 1970's, and he began a study of carving shortly after.

While visiting Storm King he was inspired by the stone sculptures of Isamu Nougchi and spent years searching for a relationship with a medium that would become his own voice.

That medium became the hydrothermally formed Farrago, a richly colored and multi-hued churning storm of an image solidified into pockets of mountains in the American Southwest. After developing his signature style he worked with the world famous artist Alfred van Loen after the sculptor lost a leg to the ravages of diabetes. When Professor van Loen passed away, Mr. McCoy accepted some of his students and began to conserve his remaining work for placement around Long Island.

Mr. McCoy became the Operations Manager for the Nassau County Museum of Art in Roslyn Harbor, N.Y. in 1997, and for over three years lived on the grounds while supervising museum installations and fund-raising events.

His installation work and lighting were regularly praised by the patrons and curators familiar with the museum, and his installation of major Calder mobiles for a Calder/Miro exhibition was highly regarded by the curators of the Museum of Modern Art for their spatial placement and non-intrusive safety mounting. For the Louis Comfort Tiffany/Stamford White and Their Circle show he created a rich tableau based on a photograph of a room garden in Tiffany's home in Cold Spring Harbor, building an indoor fountain with pool and a 12 foot high credenza for the display of Tiffany glassworks. Upon seeing the room at the reception the patron that lent the glassworks was so impressed that she promised to donate the entire collection, valued at over $2 million, to the museum. For that show he also created a back-lit display for a massive nine panel Tiffany window, Mermaid, that had not been fully assembled since 1952.

Along with museum trustee Jolanta Zamecka, whom he had worked with to create the tableau for the Tiffany room, he curated a major portion of the 20th Century Sculptors Show, thrilling the lenders of the work with the dynamics and interplay of their own collections.

Wishing to concentrate on his own artwork he left the museum to continue his studies and test the boundaries of his medium and himself.

Mr. McCoy has recently moved his studio to Tucson, Az., and is showing with Gallery Centella.

The artist began an independent study of Pop Art and Surrealism in 1972. He began carving a startlingly colorful stone called Farrago, a hydrothermally formed stone from the American Southwest, in `84. This stone is still a unique signature of Mr. McCoy, as is the elegant use of branching trees as a carving medium created by the artist in `91.

Back to Main Page