Biography

Kenny Smith is a Vermont-based modern quilt artist and founder of TheKingSlacker Studio, the creative identity through which he has shared his work as @thekingslacker. He lives and works in the hills of Rutland alongside his wife and creative partner, Kelley McCrory (@kelleyinvermont).

Smith began quilting in 2015 as a way to spend more intentional time with Kelley while balancing a demanding career in Information Technology. The practice soon became a source of grounding, emotional release, and self-discovery. His earlier years as an endurance runner—and decades working in systems and technology—continue to inform the discipline, repetition, and problem-solving within his studio practice. He retired from IT in December 2021 to work as an artist full time.

Joe Cunningham’s Rock the Block technique first challenged Smith’s assumptions about quilts as rigid or predetermined. Sherri Lynn Wood’s improvisational philosophy expanded that opening, revealing fabric as a medium for intuition, emotion, and personal narrative.

Working without commercial patterns, Smith builds, cuts apart, reorganizes, and reconstructs. Saturated color emerges against black, gray, and shadowed neutrals; quilting adds time, movement, and tactile depth. His works use geometry and improvisation to consider memory, identity, grief, freedom, and the possibility of light emerging from dark places.