cohesive discord process

for BOX 13 @ space 125 gallery of the Houston Arts Alliance.







These are process shots from one of the pieces for this show that will be site specific collaborative work with Whitney Riley.

ARTSlant interview with Kathy Kelley

I was interviewed by Georgia Fee and the ARTslant team for their San Francisco art community website. The site is similar to Texas' www.glasstire.com.

You can read the interview here: ARTslant SF rackroom

Needless to say my ego and resume are pleased.
kk

Me on the cover

Me on the cover of ArtsHouston magazine, May 2008 edition.
Paint donated by New Living and Photo by Kara Duval.

No the issue isn't all about me or about me even a little, I just happen to be on the cover. I was however featured in this magazine in the article, When art Goes Green in Houston, in the April 2008 edition (ArtsHouston).

Sidenote: You should have seen the funky sunburn I got from doing this...let’s just say paint makes a great sunblock and I forgot to put sunscreen everywhere else.

feet of shadows

in presences
i swoon distance
and am found in the flatness
of a memory not my own
an undifferentiated abyss
of sameness
feet of shadows
trudge this space
of absence.

Be a BOX amigo

WORKDAYS - prepping gallery walls
Saturday, April 12 & 19, 10 am -5 pm

WE NEED HELP prepping the walls for paint in our gallery spaces. Bring your friends, tell your students and come on down to the Box. This is another great opportunity to preview the galleries and studios while getting to know the resident artists and become an official BOX Amigo! Don’t miss the fun!

Saturday, April 12, 10 am - 5pm
We will be wiping down the walls. Also laying plastic and taping off areas to protect from paint splatters.

BRING (if possible): bucket, sponges, towels.
Oh, and cold beer provided.

Saturday, April 19, 10 am - 5pm
We will priming the walls.

BRING (if possible): paint roller and fresh pad for semi smooth/rough surface.
Oh, and cold beer provided.

BOX 13 ArtSpace is a nonprofit artist run innovative environment for the creation and advancement of experimental contemporary art in Houston. BOX 13 artists create this environment through the offering of affordable workspaces for emerging and established artists, dedicating three interior spaces to the exhibition of artistic explorations, a window gallery for installations and an outdoor performance exhibition space. BOX 13 promotes dialogue among artists and the art community on current trends affecting the arts.

The founding members of BOX 13 are Elaine Bradford, Woody Golden, Michael Henderson, Young-Min Kang, Kathy Kelley, Teresa O'Connor, Whitney Riley and Mat Wolff.

BOX 13 is a nonprofit corporation.

BOX 13 at HAA: cohesive discord

Cohesive discord

The melding of process, medium and ego with another in the act of collaboration doesn’t always result in the expected. But to hell with the results, the whole process in and of its self is a bit uncomfortable, unsettling. Why should one chose to participate in this self-infliction of agreed upon ego alliance? An occasional unsettling, a little discomfort, can propel one, whether artist or audience, to think a little different, be a little different. It allows for the unexpected, uncovers alternative slants, dislodges wrong assumptions, moves us outside of our proverbial BOX.

BOX 13 collaborating artists: Elaine Bradford, Lisa Godfry, Woody Golden, Michael Henderson, Kathy Kelley, Teresa O'Connor, Anila Quayyum Agha, Whitney Riley, Mat Wolff, and David Waddell.

Exhibition June-August 2008 (Opening date TBA)
space123gallery
3201 Allen Parkway, Suite 250
Houston, TX 77019

in the process of making

in the space of absence, suckling is continuous.
8' x 10' x 3'. remnant tubes.
consider this a sketch.

DETAIL





gulping.
6' x 9' x 3.5'.
remnant tubes, baling wire, cinder blocks.
IN PROCESS

Time Marker/Time Keeper

H7 exhibition at Lone Star College North Harris
Sculpture Vision XVI
2700 WW Thorne Dr, Houston, TX 77073






The birth of destruction lies within our strength; every tool becomes a weapon when held just right.
16 remnant tires and baling wire. 2008.
Kathy Kelley

slide show

Find more photos like this on ArtsHouston

twas a fun day of suckling!

thanks again to Elaine Bradford of BBAP and Jeff Shell of Green Valentine. it could not have happened without their hard work.



Freed Park Suckling is Continuous installation





18-wheeler tire side walls, inner tubes, baling wire
10' diameter







Kathy and Christopher atop a suckling artifact.
auto tire side walls, baling wire
8' diameter

a big thank you

Gargantuous thanks to Elaine Bradford, JoAnn Park, Troy Stanley and Mat Wolff for helping me with the final installation of suckling is continuous. I am sure all have sore fingers from sewing tire nipple/orifices with baling wire. Though they've all learned my technique, i don't think I have to worry about anyone stealing the method based on the sore fingers that crawled home for a good soaking tonight.

Thanks to Tire International, Ernest's Tires, Refugio Tire Center and Gene Williamson Tires for giving me their old inner tubes and tire scraps.

suckling is continuous

installation at freed park in the heights
at corner of houston ave. and white oak

saturday, feb 9
2pm
unveiling (sans the veil)/meet the artist

------------------------------------

Green Valentine. (by Elaine)

Houston Artist Kathy Kelley creates new sculpture for Freed Park

HOUSTON, TX (January 15, 2008): Buffalo Bayou ArtPark (BBAP) and Heights Beautification Project (HBP) are pleased to present a year-long art installation by local artist Kathy Kelley at Freed Art and Nature Park located at the corner of Houston Ave and White Oak Blvd. Kelley was commissioned to create a piece of site specific art that embodied the ideas of sustainability and recycling, and will be unveiled on February 9, 2008 as part of the 5th annual Green Valentine Tree Planting.

Artist Kathy Kelley was chosen from several proposals submitted to BBAP for the Green Valentine project. Her sculpture is titled “Suckling is Continuous.” Kelley will be creating three large spheres shrouded in found tire elements. She explains the sphere was chosen for its reference to the ongoing nature of our consumptive behavior, and the tire scraps are drawn from elements used in transporting us to and from the objects of our desires.

Kathy Kelley graduated with her MFA from the University of Houston in 2006. She is the recipient of an Emerging Artist Fellowship from the Houston Arts Alliance in 2008, and was awarded Best of Show in the Seven-State Biennial Exhibition at the University of Science and Art of OK Art Gallery in 2007. For more information on Kathy Kelley visit http://kathrynkelley.blogspot.com/ .

BBAP is an artist run, non-profit organization that places temporary art in public spaces across Houston and Harris County. BBAP is partially funded by the City of Houston through the Houston Arts Alliance. They are also supported by grants from the Wortham Foundation, the Brown Foundation and Houston Endowment, along with many friends and neighbors. For more information please visit www.bbap-houston.org.

Green Valentine is Co-sponsored by the Heights Beautification Project and the City of Houston’s Parks and Recreation Department. HBP is a citizens’ volunteer group based in The Heights who collaborate on beautification projects in the community. For the past five years, HBP volunteers have planted hundreds of trees at Stude Park and near the White Oak Bayou as part of the Green Valentine Tree Planting. For more information please visit www.greenvalentine.org .

The green art installation was made possible by the generous support of Jaysen Clark, Heather and Randall Davis, Robin and Charles Reimer, BJ and Bob Shell, Monsour Taghdisi and Becca and John Thrash.

why wallpaper (multiples)

(besides ocd)

where can i go that i don’t see row after row of stuff, even just sitting in a little restaurant this morning for breakfast…row upon row of tables, stacks upon stacks of trays, row upon row of bricks, row upon row of juices, desserts, bottles of soup…all are displayed in gridded clusters. i step outside into a parking lot of delineated parking spots filled with car after car. i drive down the street, stripe upon stripe, dot upon dot. cars as far as i can see lined at a stand still on the freeway in the early morning, massive repetition. series, multiples everywhere i go, everywhere i look. rows of stores, bigger than ever, line their interiors and exteriors with the repetitive presentation of their trinkets.

the trend over the last several decades in the arts of multiples and obsessive repetition seems a natural manifestation of our culture and an ever increasing population density (mass).

ok i haven’t fleshed this all the way out, its my first response to thinking about why the trend of multiples is so prevalent right now not just in my own work but in main stream art.

if art is a manifestation of cultural funk, well then, wallpaper art seems to be a perfect manifestation of the last couple of years.

"Armadillish, bearish and stranger shapes lining the wall like low trophies, mysterious protrusions reminiscent of Frances Bagley's draped animals."

be sure to check out J R Compton's review Of wallpaper & other repeating patterns, on the dallas art revue website.


suckling is continuous. currently on exhibition at 500x.org for their expo 2008 curated by terrie thorton. the photo was shot by JR Compton Dallas Arts Revue.

---

i always find it amazing that what smells like trash and looks like trash in the back of my truck, on the side of the road, or in my backyard (to the horror of my husband and neighbors) looks like art when you slap it into a white box with dramatic lighting. i am not mocking the white box; as a matter of fact, in a sick kind of way, i love the white box. it stands in perfect opposition to the rawness of what i am drawn to make.

----

LIGHTING. lighting was one of the elements that made Rauschenberg's recent cardboard box exhibition at the Menil feel so fleshy and human. when i saw the menil's brochure for the show, the boxes appeared as boxes, i was not overly attracted. but when i stepped into the intimately lite space, the works were transformed; i was transformed. i've been partial to Rauschenberg's combines since i first saw them in padget's contemporary painting class in 2005, but the Menil's presentation of his boxes overwhelmed me with an awesome gnawing response to his unboxy, boxes. i had to restrain myself from caressing the work. would this have been so if they had been in a cold harsh light? i think not.

i suppose lighting is like hair--a bad hair day can make anyone look bad, but a good hair day, well it just makes my perspective on life good that day.

medium, method, mortality

my life seems wrapped up in attempts to overcome, divert, manipulate or extend my medium, method and mortality. i am speaking of the art of life not the art of art. the medium being the physical world in which i am embedded. the method is the various extensions of self used in navigating the medium--my truck extends my capacity to carry and move, my knife extends the taring function of my teeth, my phone extends my ability to be present in a location in which i do not physically reside. the mortality is the temporal nature of my existence.

if i am not manipulating, negotiating or attempting to overcome my medium, method or mortality, it seems i am spending a great deal of time and energy in diverting my mind from these limitations--perhaps my consumer whoring is my diversion or at a minimum it gives me the illusion of overcoming these parameters of existence.

pondering medium, method and mortality.

suckling is continuous but no longer functional

elements for an installation in a new park, freed park. freed park is located on the south east corner of houston avenue and white oak, in houston, tx.

the park opening is planned for saturday, february 9, 2008.

Tires, nails, rope, plaster and tar have traveled to Oklahoma

Centerfold: USAO Seven-State Biennial
Part II - Opening Reception: Saturday, January 12, 2008

Leslie Powell Foundation and Gallery
620 SW D Avenue
Lawton, OK 73501

Mixed-media wall hanging wins competition. A radical mixed-media wall hanging that has the impact of a nightmarish nocturnal landscape by Houston artist Kathryn Kelley has won the...first place award in the Seven-State Biennial exhibit.

Numerous rusty nails, hammered into a tar-covered board become a starry night sky over a "darkling plain” of slashed tires and burned, tar-blackened, fraying rope in Kelley's "The Shadowlands.” John Brandenburg, NewOK, November 207.

Two of my works, The shadowlands and I hate the idea of surrender, were selected juror by Paul Medina.

Tires travel to Dallas for 500x EXPO

EXPO 2008 Juried Show

January 12 - February 2, 2008
Reception: January 12, 6-10pm

500X Gallery
500 Exposition Avenue
Dallas, TX 75226
About EXPO
500X Gallery, Texas�s oldest artist-run space, hosts one of North Texas� most anticipated annual juried competitions. The exhibition is open to all artists over the age of 18 living in Texas. All visual media is eligible including drawing, painting, sculpture, installation and video (artist must supply all required electronic equipment).

About the Juror
Terri Thornton is an artist living and working in Fort Worth, Texas who splits her time between tending to the responsibilities of her position as Curator of Education at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth and pursuing her career as an artist. Her work has been included in exhibitions throughout Texas and in Louisiana and Oklahoma. Her most recent exhibitions include Exhibition #11 at and/or Gallery in Dallas, Cherry Picked: 2007 Survey of Texas Art and Artists at Wichita Falls Museum of Art at Midwestern State University, and Ether, a collaboration with Frances Colpitt, opening in November, 2007 at Testsite, Fluent~Collaborative in Austin. She earned a Master of Arts and a Master of Fine Arts from University of Dallas and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from University of North Texas.

included works:

humble, human, humus

the result of artificial limitations is rebellion unless one is distracted, diverted, or deluded.

i do not rebel, so which am i?

clawing for eden

clawing for eden
[suckling is continous but no longer functional series]
6' x 9' x 6'
remnant inner tubes
november 2007

Heffalumps*

...One of the best things I saw at CSAW was these huge, smelly heffalumps made from old inner tubes by Kathy Kelley. Sure, it's a little retro, like a S&M Lee Bontecou, but their enormous flab and powerful grunge are not to be denied. Kelley's worth watching.

For Whom the Bell Crawls
Houston Artletter by Bill Davenport, 11/2007
Glasstire Blog

Yeah-Hah! I was pretty thrilled to see the above on the glasstire.com blog. I figure I better enjoy it while I can, cause I could always get spanked next time. I found it perceptive that Davenport so quickly and concisely summed up what I am doing well and what I am struggling with all from a positive slant. I am definitely struggling with the retro post-minimalist thing. That mode of working is less a nod to post-minimalism (though my hat is definitely off to Eva Hesse, Lee Bontecou, Louise Bourgeois as well as Donald Judd, Richard Serra, Robert Morris) and more of an innate way of making (a visceral gnawing) and material choice. So I am trying to explore ways of entering into 2007 (just haven't found it yet) via my making/materials.

Thanks Bill.

*if you're not sure what heffalumps are, reread winnie the pooh.

And then I got spanked.

In regards to titus o'brien's comments

LIKE Lee Bontecou?
written by titus_obrien on November 20, 2007

I saw Bontecou's retrospective (a few times) a couple years back, and have long been a fan. Kelley's sculptures go beyond owing debt, to pure imitation.

"pure imitation" is pure conjecture based on obrien's view point. Unless, he's been crawling around in my head or observed the process from which the work was derived, then he can neither comment on the intent or act from which the work was derived. However he may surely speak to similarities, differences or make judgments of the work itself.

i do not discredit him for taking a stand. any good writer or critic must make a stand if he wants someone to listen. i simply stand against the statement that my work is imitation.

i am definitely influenced by art history, but i am influenced even more so by my materials in conjunction with my current thinking, with the addition of book research and collaborative critique with fellow artists. this series of works sprung out of the idea of continuous consumption...the stunting of growth via unending wanting....the never ending suckling of consumer goods without fulfillment...some of melanie klein's object relations theory on personality development, envy and gratitude or lack thereof, her referencing of the experience of breast feeding being determinant in much about who a person becomes, along with the remnant inner tubes that already screamed radial and a semi-recent (feminine?) inclination to sew all led up to suckling is continuous but no longer functional series of explorations. half way through sewing nipples for the first black painting, references to lee bontecou became quite evident. from there i began to push away from the inadvertent references to bontecou and started relying on the materials themselves to guide me in the making.

kk

ArtCrawl Houston this Saturday

ArtCrawl Houston
Saturday, Nov. 17
2 - 9 pm

Studio open house at most the downtown art warehouses. Come see reasonable and unreasonable art. There will be a free metro bus to shuttle people about. Free parking. Yes you can bring your kids. Unfortunately the old warehouses are not handicap friendly (sorry).

Stop by and see me.
Commerce Street Art Warehouse
Studio F2 (also J...but since I can only be in one studio at a time, come find me in F2)
2315 Commerce Street
Houston, TX 77002
713.299.8582

artcrawlhouston.com map

when artists become sheep

when artists become sheep.
[suckling is continuous series]
6' x 9' x 3'
tubes, baling wire on frame, cinder blocks
november 2007


when artists become sheep (detail)

what is it that i have, that i was not given

what is it that i have, that i was not given
[suckling is continuous series]
tubes, baling wire, wood frame
6' x 9' x 2' framed area
various stacked tubes
october 2007

Wish and will depart

Wish and will depart,
urge and impulse infiltrate—
my being or lack there of.
[suckling is continuous series].
10-2007
inner tubes, baling wire.
6' x 9' x 2'

detail.

How does one distinguish between vision and delusion?

inside feeding outside
outside feeding inside
i neither stop nor start at the skin
that i am rational
that i am autonomous
dissipates/dissolves
suckling is continuous


How does one distinguish between vision and delusion?
[suckling is continuous series]. 9/2007.
blownout tire sidewalls, inner tubes, baling wire.
size varies.

what is it that i have, that i was not given

Wish and will depart
Urge and impulse infiltrate
My being or lack there of
Suckling is continuous.


what is it that i have, that i was not given
[Suckling is continuous. series] 10/2007.
6' x 8'. inner tubes, baling wire.

Incessant wanting.

In the space of absence.

Intimacy. Fear. Proximity. Disturbing nearness. Loss of shallow distance. Contamination. Enclosure. Enclusion. Exclusion. Exception. Endless waiting. Out of place. Out of time. Out of tune. Profound unsettling. Mode of eradication. Intolerance. Non-recognition. Residue. Degeneration of public space. Incessant wanting. Defense mechanism of self enclosure. Numbness.

...The 'state of emergency' in which we live is not the exception but the rule
(Walter Benjamin, 1940).

I hide my own culpability in consumer whoring. Yet my collecting, harvesting, and acquiring has been redirected to objects of decay found along the street side. I am drawn to the symbolic and formal elements of decay, the way in which an object has been altered by its mere existence. The worn, broken, torn nature of the aged object seems to make it more real, more honest. So I collect decayed urban refuse. I hold onto it for awhile. Cogitate. Eventually the formal and symbolic elements of the materials and my current research meld. Then I make. The making is a visceral reaction against the cult of the instant, the new, the forever young, forever fertile with its pushed up breast and swollen lips, a reaction against perpetual numbness and defense mechanisms of self enclosure. Cognitively, emotionally, I am a full participant in our capital culture. But I find myself making, assembling, revaluing objects of refuse, moving from spectation toward production, not mechanized but sensualized by the hand, by my hand. Mind and body working in rebellion, in synch; the nonsense and sense merge as coherent objects. The sculptural constructs become a stand in for the shadow self, an empty self.

drool

if i give up consumer whoring,
stand atop maslow’s hierarchy
wiping the pavlovian drool from my lips
what remains



I find my voice only to discover everyone is talking, no one is listening.
40" x 16". Found tire remnants, tire tube pads. 2007.

Dead surface :: A review of End Game (2004) by Damien Hirst

If Robert Rauschenberg’s current cardboard exhibition at the Menil is fleshy (carnal) and intuitive, then Damien Hirst’s End Game at the MFAH is barren (dead) and calculated. Hirst’s piece of death is a cold medical display cabinet of glass and stainless steel (~6’ x 12’) housing on its glass shelves row after row of stainless steel tools created for the purpose of poking, prodding, and cutting human tissue. Along side of these tools and my shattered image that plays across their surfaces are the prepackaged consumable products of sampling, collecting, and cleaning. Every item is new, unused and commercially fabricated with the exception of the two dangling remnants of tool-making, language-oriented, bipedal primates, homo sapien sapiens. All soft tissue is absent, only the bones remain. These two sets of bolted together bones are suspended back to back, one large, one small—male, female(?). They call to mind how one mate will quickly follow the other into the shadow of death. The smaller of the two, the female, is marked with the anatomical muscle and tendon insertion and origin points, information required for the neat dismemberment of remains for the purpose of study and/or disposal. In spite of all the iconic meaning culturally embedded in these remnants, the skeletons are subservient to the awesome undulating forms of the medical instruments with their horrific functions. The instruments are simple machines. They require the application of a mechanical force to operate; this force is the human hand, the hand of the living—the living dissecting the dead. Hirst’s choice to encase tools of dismemberment and the human remains are a cold reminder of one’s own mortality.

The strong conceptual basis of End Game is enhanced by the material seduction that becomes perverse as I, the viewer, become the voyeur of my own death. The materiality and presentation is in the same vein as Jeff Koons’ vacuum pieces with their enshrined, mass produced ready mades. Both create spectacle, but unlike Koons, Hirst’s piece isn’t about the commodity fetish of stuff but instead about the commodity of life and its ensuing demise.

As I stood there and plundering the remaining dregs of my analysis, scrawling dedicatedly into my notebook, two gray haired couples (~75 years old) entered the space. Immediately one of the husbands laughingly and loudly exclaimed to the group, “Yup! We’ll be there soon enough.” Only after this did they step forward to consider the contents of the cabinet and the title. Hirst’s titles are important to his work, but in this case it only served the couples and myself as a brutal exclamation point. Death encroaches!

I turned to leave and to my further dismay (as illusive hopes of penned originality dissipated) what I have encoded in my notebook has already been decoded on the wall. Damn. As I read the plasticized text there, I wondered if you sent me here (Oh yes, I am that egocentric.) to see one artists journey into the questions of what it means to be human and his direct manner of articulating his observations visually and via language. Hum, a worthy artist to study.

Kathryn Kelley. 2007.