Kristen Mimms Scavnicky is an artist, designer, and assistant professor in the College of Architecture and Environmental Design at Kent State University. She holds a Master of Architecture from the University of Cincinnati College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning and a Bachelor of Arts in Architecture from the University of Kentucky College of Design. She previously held a teaching appointment as a Visiting Instructor at the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture at Taliesin.
Her interdisciplinary work weaves together abstraction, spatial storytelling, and cultural memory, fluidly integrating painting, drawing, and spatial installation. She explores how space holds and reveals identity—particularly through unspoken dynamics shaped by race, history, and emotion. Rooted in practices of resistance and resilience, her research examines how spatial conditions influence mental well-being and how mindful design can reclaim presence, care, and agency.
