Karly Kennedy is a Florida-based artist, you can find a lot of her work etched into people’s skin as highly detailed tattoos, as the official heraldry of military units, and her intricate and at times, mystical, designs adorning walls as much coveted art.
Karly was commissioned by SOG earlier this year, to use her art to visually tell the history of the knife company turning 35. As part of that celebration, SOG is releasing a limited number of Vision XR LTE – 35 Year Editions, and each of those 350 knives comes with a commemorative coin that uses Kennedy's art to capture SOG's past, present and future, as well as some other special items with the graphic she designed. We talked to Kennedy about her art, the images used to tell the SOG story and the fact her father is a "knife connoisseur."
SOG: How did you get in with a knife company for creating their artwork?
KK: "I went to school for graphic design, because you can actually make money doing that in the art world, but I kept with my work as an illustrative artist. So I was in school, and I knew some guys who wanted something done for the Marine's Scout Sniper School, and I gave them something, that in retrospect, was really kind of crappy. But that got me into this community."
SOG: But had you worked with knives before?
KK: "No. I've done a lot of work for Wetsu and some work with the Clandestine Media Group and few other companies in the gun and armed services world. I had been talking with a couple of people at SOG before that, but they reached out to me when this opportunity came up."
SOG: What kind of direction did SOG give you on the artwork?
KK: "I knew it was for the 35th year anniversary and they wanted to make a coin, so I had to incorporate the design into a circle. Beyond that, we had fleshed out symbology pretty well, so my job was to incorporate them all into something that could work as a small circle and also be scaled up."
SOG: What did you end up doing?
KK: "I went with an owl which is both a symbol of wisdom and known as being observers in the animal kingdom. There's a skull there, too, a symbol or good luck and rebirth when you pair it with wings. And the snake eater is a hat tip to the original MACV-SOG that SOG based their first knife on."
SOG: Are you happy with it?
KK: "Yes! As an artist you always want to make changes and try other things out, but when I saw how it looked on the coin, I was just amazed. It's stunning. I was surprised how much detail came out on that coin. I thought that was going to be a challenge, but it came out really, really well."
SOG: The Vision XR LTE knife looks really cool, too. Have you seen one of those?
KK: "Not yet. My dad is more excited about the knife, I think. He kept asking me when it was going to drop. He's a bit of as knife connoisseur and really wants one of these.
Karly’s design is available on a variety of items, including SOG’s Vision XR LTE 35 Year Edition and as a t-shirts, check out the full SOG 35 Year Collection here.
You can find more of Karly’s work at www.dontdieco.com and @dontdieco
