Murryville artist among 'Art of the State' winners for 2nd time

A Murrysville artist has once again earned a spot in Pennsylvania’s “Art of the State” contest, and will have her work displayed in the state capitol.

Patty Kennedy-Zafred, 72, of Murrysville took first place in the annual contest’s craft division in 2022, with a piece titled “American Portraits: Harvesting Hope,” a quilt created by silk screening photos of farm laborers and migrant workers from the early 20th century onto hand-dyed fabric.

“I spent hours looking for photos on the Library of Congress website,” Kennedy-Zafred said. “When the (U.S.) Farm Administration was collecting those photos, they hired photographers from newspapers and sent them all over the country.”

This year, she captured second place in the craft division with another entry in the “American Portraits” series, titled “Deep Roots.”

To do silk screening, Kennedy-Zafred leaves her home studio for Artists Image Resource on Pittsburgh’s North Side, and instead of hand-dyed fabric, the images were silk screened onto old feed sacks she purchased online.

“As a substrate, I think the feed sacks really connect the story better,” she said. “And I always make sure to have extra (feed sacks), because there are always mistakes. On cotton fabric, I’ll load the screen and pull it maybe two or three times. With the the feed sack, I’m pulling it five or six times because the fabric really soaks up the dye.”

The effect is a layered portrait, showing young laborers mingling with the names and logos of many of the companies that may have hired them back in the 1920s and ’30s.

Kennedy-Zafred’s latest project uses the images to create accordion books, panels which fold out into one long scroll of art.

“What’s really nice about the accordion books is that they’re very flexible when it comes to displaying them at art installations, and they fold completely flat, so you can fit a lot into a single box.”

She has created accordion books featuring Library of Congress photos of Native Americans, and is working on a series using photos she and her husband snapped during a recent trip to Trieste and Venice, Italy. Those photos will be collaged with others from a similar trip more than four decades ago.

“As I’m getting older and thinking about what may be my last projects, I want to make something that brings back memories for me,” she said.

All of the winning entries in the “Art of the State” will be on display through Jan. 5 at the State Museum of Pennsylvania in Harrisburg. They can also be viewed online at StateMuseumPA.org/aos24winners.

For more on Kennedy-Zafred’s art, see PattyKZ.com.