Multidisciplinary artist and designer Kelsey Copeland has always been drawn to working with materials with past lives, whether that means laying thrifted fabrics on canvas, using old coffee to mix her paints, or carving statuettes out of residual wood left over from designing a piece of furniture (a skill Copeland also possesses).
More recently, this fascination took an even more earthy turn after finding that mold had bloomed on top of the jar of coffee she planned to paint with, the mold itself—and its connection to decomposition and the creation of something new—became incorporated into her practice. References to mold, alongside materials like wood, metal, and light, come together in her latest exhibition, “Ash Returns to Dust,” debuting Friday, Aug. 9 at the Secret Flowers studio space in the Fan. Through their patina, the exhibition’s pieces offer a deeply personal exploration of Copeland’s own lived experience with pain, death, and renewal.
Her artistic journey began in Alabama, where her grandmother, an artist herself, first taught her how to paint. This marked the beginning of a lifetime of exploring different modes of creation, with Copeland moving to New York for a formal education in interior design before finding work designing residential interiors in Richmond. It was through this work that she began to paint professionally—she tried her hand at creating abstract paintings tailored to complement client interiors, and found that clients were eager to buy them. From there, Copeland’s skill set would continue to expand—to woodworking, upholstery, lighting design—propelled by a natural inclination toward DIY.
“Any time I’ve wanted something that doesn’t exist, my reaction is to say that I’ll make it,” she says.
As her list of modalities grew, Copeland worked to refine her style. Drawn to allowing intuition to guide her works, she took inspiration from the likes of abstract expressionist painter Helen Frankenthaler, whose Color Field paintings depict vast, emotionally evocative washes of color. With her practice growing, Copeland had a studio space on Broad Street in Richmond—and when the space’s lease was nearing its end, she began preparing to host a final show as a send-off. However, the show was postponed indefinitely after Copeland experienced a harrowing traumatic event related to domestic violence. This event and the experiences leading up to it had a clear impact on her work, Copeland says, and compounded an additional trauma—her mother’s battle with early-onset Alzheimer’s and subsequent death in 2023. The show’s postponement and evolution into “Ash Returns to Dust” not only allowed her to process these experiences, but also illuminated the ways in which they fit into her sustained reflections on the cyclical.
“When I had this traumatic event happen, it was very similar to something that happened to me in my childhood,” she says. “I remember meeting with a counselor who told me that I intentionally stopped the cycle of violence that was going to repeat itself, and I hadn’t realized that. Trauma cycles often repeat themselves over and over again generationally, and that specifically is something I’m focusing on in this work.”
Copeland’s meditations on time and cycles became central to “Ash Returns to Dust,” where backlit paintings featuring undulating, earthy colors, evocations of mold and lichens, and literal ash meld as a reminder that the decay of one element is, often simultaneously, the birth of another.
“I think it’s an interesting dichotomy that something like mold, something breaking down, can be beautiful,” she says. “That made me think about how the experience with my mom was extremely traumatic, but also brought me to feel an incredible level of compassion. And a few months before she passed, she put her hand on my sister and said, ‘we’re going to have a baby soon.’ And we all had no idea what she was talking about. Then she passed away and my sister got pregnant, and my whole family feels like he was either brought to us by her or is her reincarnated.”
The opening reception for “Ash Returns to Dust” will take place from 7-10 p.m. on Friday, and will remain on view through Saturday during gallery hours from 12-4 p.m. The ephemeral exhibition serves not only as testament to the transformative power of art, but also invites viewers to witness what we often aim to avoid—time, deterioration, death—and by looking, discover something more.
“I feel very strong and grounded despite everything I’ve been through,” she says. “[But] everything about these works feels vulnerable, and I think you can feel the emotional hurt. This show is deeply intimate and personal to me, and I like that about it.”
“Ash Returns to Dust,” an exhibition by Kelsey Copeland, takes place on Friday, Aug. 9 from 7 to 10 p.m. at Secret Flowers, 207 N. Davis Ave.
