Spotlights On: Kevin Summers

Kevin Summers doesn’t do anything halfway. The artist, who specializes in assemblage and experimental sound, has built a reputation around variety: from organizing Piggery Pete’s Perchten Parade to performing, most recently with his apocalyptic-aware sculpture Clown Call for the End of the Anthropocene. 

His journey with unconventional sound began early, putting down roots amidst middle-school English class projects. 

“I was creating radio shows featuring music and live intros. That's where I started using the equipment,” Summers details. “I was just experimenting with music and sound. Then I would look at the films I was watching, and go to shows, and realize that other people were doing this.”

Summers leading chants during the 2026 parade.

It was then that he dove headfirst into the genre that would follow him through college and into his adult career, a thread that runs through his education at Carnegie Mellon University and his time as a teacher in Camden, NJ, and Northern Michigan. He defines his genre of experimental sound/noise as adjacent to “electro-acoustic” or  “noise” music, with a history dating back to the 1900’s, extracting familiar wartime sounds to contribute to the coping art that followed.

“Noise music is over a hundred years old,” he describes, talking deeper about his work with sculptures. “I’m finding things that exist in the world that already make noise and combining them in different ways.”

Summers often uses air horns, bells, and alarms in his work, wiring them through effects pedals and using the same experimental techniques that date back to his work with tape and feedback loops. Even within one of his most public works, the Piggery Pete's Perchten Parade, there are always elements of sound— from chants and calls to bells and drums that fit the folk roots of the parade. His art, whether private or pedestrian, soundless or screaming, has never been meant to be viewed passively. 

“My favorite quote about the impact of art is from Lawrence Weiner. He said something like ‘the purpose of art is not to fuck up someone’s day on their way to work, but to fuck up their entire life.’ He meant it in the sweetest way,” he recounted. “The idea that people can be confronted with this thing, and come out on the other side in touch with the radical sublimity of life— if we can get out of our own heads, and say. ‘Wow, these things are really possible.”

Summers amidst the Piggery Pete's Perchten Parade that was held on March 7, 2026.

As a growing artist in the late 90’s, his identity was shaped in part by the openness he saw across the alternative scene progressing at the time, both on local and national stages.

“I think it’s very powerful to have that openness, breaking away from any constructions that were in place. It encourages a lot more creativity than having those rigid rules,” Summers says. “I would say that's probably one of my favorite things about our community, is the people who are crossing both of those lines. It's like, you want to burn it, you burn it, you think I want to burn it down, right? But also, it's just kind of a cool thing.” 

He brought this open-minded approach to his teaching, achieving high test scores for his students while still encouraging them to think outside of the box. A former professor of his, Steve Kurtz, uplifted him during his own journey, eventually offering a performance opportunity at a party.

“It was not a big thing for him to ask me to do that, but for me, it was huge. I think that’s the interesting part about being early career versus late career, an invite like that can make all the difference for someone getting started,” he says. 

In late October 2025, he had the opportunity to perform at the international experimental music festival, Avant Garde a Clue II, held in Rochester, New York. He brought his sculpture Clown Call for the End of the Anthropocene, which exhibits the same scavenged items as many of his other sculptures: alarm bells, signal horns, and a DJ lighting controller to operate it. 

Whether he’s performing with one person or one of 200 acts, like the festival, he sees beauty in each joining, noting how unexpected harmonies and synchronicities can come together to create something even more special. For him, art isn’t a form of complicity or even reaction; it’s expression and protest in the present moment, and shows how beauty can be found in what’s already existent, despite acceptable standards.

Summers performing with an assemblage.

“Don’t look around and see what’s there and make it; you want to make the thing that you want to see that’s not there,” Summers describes. “Don’t interfere with the impact of the work, I think about that a lot too. “It does not have to be perfect— your primary goal is to get your message across.”

And that, without a doubt, is what he does. While much of his focus had been on the most recent and final installment of the 2026 Piggery Pete’s Perchten Parade, he was also recently hosted by Maple Grove House Shows for an electroacoustic sound bath and is exploring collaborations with ecstatic dance groups. Keep up with his work at https://www.knsummers.com or on his Instagram at @knsummers79.