RAIR | 2026

Lydia jenkins musco

Lydia Jenkins Musco's work has gained recognition through awards including two Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grants, a Joan Mitchell Foundation MFA Grant, an Edward F. Albee Residency Fellowship, among others. Musco earned an MFA from Boston University and has participated in international symposiums in China, South Korea, and Norway. Her work has been exhibited in galleries and outdoor venues across the United States, including the Print Center New York, the Edward Hopper House, Chautauqua Institution, Edith Wharton's House, and numerous public sculpture exhibitions. Her teaching experience includes positions at Boston University and Davidson College. Musco lives and works in Royalston, Massachusetts.

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“I interpret the world into a vocabulary of objects and images — forms with weight and mass I can walk around and marks that hold a trace of time. Both are attempts to understand how the world goes together and how it falls apart. Ordinary materials like concrete, wood, bricks, pencils, and crayons — ubiquitous and often used in humble ways we take for granted — offer a path to honesty through their fundamental simplicity.

Three bodies of work are currently in progress.

‘Unconformity’ began as a reflection on landscape and memory, on how life and geology share the same structure: accumulated layers of memory and strata, building a record of time. In geology, an unconformity is a break in time, a boundary between rocks caused by erosion or a pause in sediment accumulation. Each sculpture is an unconformity, a moment held still, breaking time. These works document the changing color, light, and form of geological landscape while echoing the layered experiences that build a life.

‘Broken Boxes’ began as a daily practice for one year: make one broken box each day, using any material, broken in any way. What emerged is an ongoing study into the strength that can come out of brokenness. This body of work has evolved into drawings, paintings, and prints questioning the shape of a threshold and the boundary between past and future.

‘Logarithmus’ explores navigation, inspired by an early nautical instrument for gauging speed called the Chip Log. The resulting form — vulnerable because of its open interior — becomes an exploration of pathfinding, with all its inherent hope and uncertainty. With the guarantee of detours and missteps, the goal of this series is to keep moving forward with curiosity.

These three bodies of work represent three tenses. ‘Unconformity’ looks at the past — life and geology sharing the same accumulated structure. "Broken Boxes" is the present, a figure standing at the threshold, having been broken but still standing. And ‘Logarithmus’ looks toward the future, navigating without a fixed route, moving forward with openness.”

See more of Lydia Jenkins Musco’s work here.