Kenniese S. Franklin is a Denver-born, New Orleans-based writer, designer, sculptor and quantum traveler with roots spread through the Great Plains, Southern Appalachia and the Atlantic South. At age 19, she left home to attend Florida A&M University, arriving as a psychology student and emerging as an artist. After obtaining her degree in 2015, she voyaged to New Orleans and began studying under the tutelage of sculptor, historian and hoodoo man Jean-Marcel St. Jacques.

She then forged a self-guided curriculum through the worlds of energy healing, plant medicine, earth stewardship, environmental psychology and interior design. Kenniese calls herself a translator of the unseen and finds value in conscious collaboration with the intangible forces that power daily life. She has chosen the homescape as her vehicle, as it quite literally houses the unseen wave patterns that make up our habits, thoughts and emotions. “Houses and the objects in them are portals to the inner world, tour guides of past times and gateways to the future,” she says. This frame of mind led Kenniese to form Spatial Therapy, a design studio that creates artwork informed by the origin, evolution, inherent divinity and underlying sanctity of the homescape.

Her recent work, Musa’s Message, is a series of household objects made from dried banana tree fiber. The collection isolates components of the banana plant to highlight themes of interdependence, malleability, sovereignty and the absolute necessity of biodiversity.

While in residence at A Studio in the Woods, Kenniese expanded the banana leaf collection and connected with the flora and fauna of the land.