Artists I Adore: LaKenzie Powell

People can make art for a variety of reasons. For some, it may be a way to dredge up a deep feeling and express it. For others, it allows them to take an idea that has been bouncing around their skull non-stop and put it to paper. Yet there are artists who don't necessarily fixate on a specific outcome or finale. Rather, they take a particular interest in their materials and media, capitalizing on their unique features and using them in unconventional ways. 

This frog would have been destined for a dumpster had it not been for Powell's intervention.

There is no artist who shows such love for their materials quite like LaKenzie Powell. She is the queen of upcycling, the embodiment of the saying "One man's trash is another man's treasure." She can take practically any little scrap, short of nuclear waste and biohazards, and fashion it into something cute and quirky. The shape and texture of a particular item often inspire her or remind her of something, spurring her to bring that something to life.

Garfield Burger, 2024

I have so much respect for Powell's heavy reliance on upcycling, as it places constraints on her creative process (not to mention that it is environmentally friendly). She's working with particular forms and has to figure out how to manipulate them. Such limitations breed ingenuity, prompting Powell to use her materials in unusual ways that she may not have thought of had she been using more amorphous materials.

With materials like clay or foil, someone can shape them into whatever they see fit. This remains true whether the figure is a simple ball or a complex mass of interweaving curves. On the other hand, when working with bits and bobs, you are limited by the shape of said bits and bobs. A round soda bottle cap is going to stay a round soda bottle cap; there is generally no changing it into a square.

Instead, Powell uses the interactions between different pieces of junk to create the shapes that she wants. The soda bottle cap will never be pointy on its own. But wait, if you cut the corner off this tiny box and glue it to the cap, suddenly you have a point! Her works are far more than the sum of their parts, coming together to make pieces such as Squidward's vacation cake or the Kelp Shake. (She does have a strong fondness for SpongeBob SquarePants). Her studio is a testament to her love of her craft, as it's decorated to the brim with her works. Some would argue that it's a mess, which I am somewhat inclined to agree with. But is there really any other way that an artist's quarters should look?

Powell's recreation of the Nasty Patty looks ready to spawn a never-before-seen foodborne pathogen.

As you might guess, Powell is also a huge fan of thrifting and yard sales. Besides getting components for her crafts at these events, she also just loves collecting all sorts of trinkets and baubles. She lives in Kentucky and so visits the semi-famous Corridor 127 Sale, a 690-mile-long collection of yard sales stretching from Michigan to Alabama. She logs her adventures here and in the rest of her life betwixt the pages of her junk journal. The book is thick and bloated, filled to the brim with receipts, stickers, flyers, and other mundane items. She is just as eager to share her creative process for her junk journal entries as she is for her 3D projects. 

Thrifting Junk Journal Entry, 2025

To be loved is to be changed....

And of course I have to mention what she is most well-known for: her love of Crayola's dandelion crayon. Ever since the color was retired in 2017, she has been collecting dandelion crayons, although she didn't start documenting her collection online until 2021. Her room is practically a shrine to it, boasting a dandelion color scheme as well as a running total of how many of the crayons she currently has. The total is past 600 at this point.

This fascination earned her the nickname "The Dandelion Crayon Girl" quite a few years ago by the collective internet. More recently, it earned her attention from the Crayola company itself. According to Crayola's mascot Dan D, he was so moved by Powell's love for the color than he decided to get together with a few other colors and embark on the Retired Crayon Tour and bring limited-edition boxes of retired colors to store shelves. Crayola even flew Powell out to meet him at Grand Central Station in celebration of World Dandelion Day 2025. At this time, she was also officially bestowed with the well-deserved title of "Dandelion's #1 Fan". 

You could witness the birth of your child, be elected President, and win a Nobel Peace Prize, yet none of those things will grant you the jubilation of a woman who knows her God is real and has shaken His hand.

As much as I love Powell's eccentricity and ingenuity though, I think her love of the creative process is her most admirable quality. It is bubbly and eager. It is coated with frosting and sprinkles and glitter. She views it not as a means to an end, but as a journey to be enjoyed in and of itself. Honestly, I feel like she most certainly enjoys the journey more than the final result. 

And this love of the pursuit of art makes her, in my opinion, a more pure and true artist than most. To bask in the glory of a finished piece, well ANYONE can do that. It's easy for someone to say how they love the way a composition turned out or how great the color scheme of a background looks. There is no challenge in loving something that is good. 

Cheddar, 2023

But to revel in a process that can often times be tedious, uncertain, and frustrating, that is truly unconditional love for one's art. We all possess it at some point in our lives, as preschoolers scribbling with reckless abandon and not caring whether or not we color inside the lines. We possess it as kindergarteners, clumsily guiding scissors along the patterns our teachers had us trace on construction paper and then gluing down the pieces in not quite the right spots on our projects. 

As we continue to grow, though, we start caring very deeply about whether or not something looks good or bad. We become thirteen-year-olds who try to draw their favorite superheroes but throw the drawings away because they don't look right. We become fifteen-year-olds who complain about having to take a high school art class because everything we have made sucks and this class is not going to change anything. We become adults who say we don't want to make art because we're not good at it, it's embarrassing to make something that doesn't look good, and we don't have the time to get good at art. And for the folks who decide to continue creating art, we become brutal self-critics who recoil at every mistake, groan at every misplaced stroke of a paintbrush, and huff at every step in the artistic process that doesn't quite fit our vision for that particular piece. 

Sock Bug, 2020

Yet Powell has managed to evade this. Her view on the artistic process has not been jaded or muddled with age. Perhaps it is only natural that someone like her has been declared a crayon's #1 fan. Who else but someone with an unconditional love of creation could embody such a blazing passion for what most eventually come to dismiss as a child's plaything? 

No matter how serious or perfectionistic some artists may be, I am a firm believer that we all have a little bit of Powell in us. She may be the axolotl of art, never entering into artistic adulthood. But who is to say we aren't jellyfish? We have mostly been unwittingly forced into artistic adulthood. But, under extraordinarily challenging circumstances, perhaps we can all briefly return to the nurturing sanctuary of artistic childhood. 

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