Cultural theorist bell hooks writes, “What we cannot imagine, cannot come into being.” This is the ethos of my work. My not-so-secret agenda is one of love, magic, justice, beauty, and pleasure. Through my practice, I call in futures where we are all liberated, loved in our wholeness, and fully resourced.

My work is playfully political, queer, feminist, sex-positive, and rooted in radical craft—a practice that questions traditions, reinterprets materials and processes and actively engages with political and social contexts. Audre Lorde’s essay, “Uses of the  Erotic: The Erotic as Power,” and Adrienne Maree Brown’s Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good  are long-standing influences. My practice responds to the kyriarchal systems that seek to separate bodies from spirit, and sexuality from divinity. In a review of my exhibtion Cosmic Wetness, Aoife Banks describes the show as “A joyous, affecting congruence of feminine erotic pleasure and sensory knowledges.”

Encompassing sculpture, installation, music, words, and video, my work paradoxically, evokes the intangible essence of things. While I use a wide range of media, glass and sound are central to this endeavour. Glass holds light; sound transmits vibration. Both mediums speak the language of the mystical.

My artist coven includes Yoko Ono, Hilma af Klint, Masaru Emoto, Sappho, Sinéad O’Connor, Hildegard of Bingen, Nikola Tesla (my birthday twin), Sun Ra, Enya and Wilhelm Reich among others.

Karen Donnellan (they/she, siad/sí) is a psychic artist and energy healer. After earning a Bachelor of Design in Glass from the National College of Art and Design, Dublin and a MFA in Glass from the Rochester Institute of Technology, New York, they served as Director of the National Casting Center Glass Studios; Associate Professor of Glass; and Chair of the Sculpture/Dimensional Studies Program at Alfred University, NY from 2014-2022.

Donnellan has received numerous residencies, most notably at the Toledo Museum of Art, Edinburgh College of Art, the Creative Glass Center of America, and Pilchuck Glass School. Their transdisciplinary work—spanning sculpture, installation, language, and music—is held in public and private collections and has been exhibited internationally, including the Smithsonian Museum, Corning Museum of Glass, Tushanwan Museum, and the Museum of American Glass.

As an energy healer, Donnellan is a practitioner, and teacher of the Rising Star, Prema Birthing, Reiki, and Seichem modalities. They are also an active member of AerachAiteachGaelach, a collective of LGBTQ+ Irish-speaking artists, researchers, and activists. Based on the West Coast of Ireland in County Sligo, they are currently working from their studio at The Model as a 2025 recipient of The Model Artists' Studio Bursary Award.

Email: karen@karendonnellan.com

Instagram: @cosmicwetness