treading where no one hears the echo of her foot fall Solo Exhibition @ Women and Their Work up until April 15, 2010.

kathryn kelley
Women and Their Work
1710 Lavaca Street
Austin, TX 78701-1316
march 6-april 15, 2010

each piece in the exhibition, instead of being titled, is associated with a poem written during the same approximate timeframe in which i was making the work (i write--i make; i make--i write; each is part of the process of the other)

~18' x 6' x 10' made from remnant tubes, door, frame, wood, 2010.
associated poem

when i shut up love
the door bangs closed
i pound and scrape
my fingers
bloody with prying
but without love
without hope
tightly shut it remains
i smell the void
the vacancy

the remotest parting
and i find
my lips part as they
press to the frame
to drink in the waft
that trickles through
i scribble down
as fast as can
the words that
spill over
and i reach
for the handle

~8' x 8' x 10' made from remnant tire elements, door, frame, wood, 2010.
associated poem

i breathe

i could no longer stay
self sequestered there
in the tower of my making

there is no good way to destroy
one's own tower
while remaining inside
there is no good way to get down
without help

no one came

i crumbled the tower
of my making
from within

and now
i wipe the dust from my face
and i stand in the rubble
of this crumbled tower

i see my feet are on the ground
i reach down
brush aside the rubble there
i am searching
searching for my path

i breathe and
i am grateful for that breath

yet i am so grieved
that they needed to tell me
i would be and will be destroyed
my breath catches deep within

~15' x 8' x 10' made from remnant tubes, door, frame, wood, 2010.
associated poem

as the ache
swells in me
there is a splintering
at the horizon of today
fragments of yesterday
and tomorrow

and i listen at this abyss
as the beyond beckons me
with its urgency and passion

i open my splintered self to it
and it whispers
my name

poem associated with exhibition title, treading where no one hears the echo of her foot fall, and the source text for the development of the exhibition:

Tell me the story of when fire came down and consumed two souls, two melded not in sameness but in fiery harmony, where they fit together and made a wholeness, a rightness, a space of intimate belonging, where love and partnership merged in the flame, a love so deep the aching overwhelms. Tell me the story of the unfolding of the fragments of wholeness through the vehicle of love. Tell me the story of a fire that can burn me with goodness and beauty. Tell me this story, not one of shadows; one of hope, not hardening. Let me flee the shadows that are bleak with chill and harden my soul in areas that have only yet begun to thaw. Tell me the story of love and light, the one that draws back the curtains of my soul and beckons me to the scent of dawn. Tell me the story where I can know light, where I can flow into the future fully present, one where this gentler light warms the hard places of my soul. Tell me a story of fire.

I don't want to hear the story of she who steals, who embraces the cold shadow of lie and self-deception that dance teasingly over her heart.

I don't want to hear her story of longing that goes empty, a space where she remains vacant and lost and wretches in the wilderness of her under grown soul.

I don't want to hear the story of the girl who got lost in her head with a thought, an idea, who lost all sense of presence and found herself alone in the vacuous cavern of her own mind, treading where no one hears the echoes of her footfall.

I don't want to hear the story of the girl who sacrificed herself for doing only what is right, who didn't know love because she was to afraid of doing wrong.
I only want one story; I don't want to hear the others for fear that they are me.