Reference, meaning, order and authority are disconnected in Robert Rauschenberg’s Volon (1971, cardboard) or what I call LAY FLAT. DO NOT STAND ON END. The primary element of the work is its deconstruction. It is in this that Rauschenberg dissolves the three pale blue boxes, pressed flat and horizontally aligned on the wall, into a shallow, fleshy, sensual surface of repetition and altered meaning.
Repetition and difference, difference without opposition. Like Donald Judd, Rauschenberg explores the cube (rectangle) via the serial usage of industrially fabricated boxes mounted on the wall. They interact with the immediate space, incorporating the light and shadow. The artist’s unique gesture/mark of originality and authority is diluted by the fabrication process (Judd) or in this case the defabrication of the prefabricated (Rauschenberg). Rauschenberg deconstructs the box by cutting the tape, releasing the staples in the same manner you or I would; the gesture is not unique or original. In opposition to Judd’s work is the choice of cardboard over steel, cardboard over plywood or plexi. Judd’s materials are all permanent, ridged and cool to the eye and hand; Rauschenberg’s are temporal, pliable and warm. Furthermore, the placement of the boxes along a fixed grid is disrupted by the final box being placed along alternate coordinates of the y and z planes. This disruption not explored by Judd, further warms the work. Neutrality through repetition and difference is denied; instead the materiality of the objects is humanized, made fleshy.
The deconstruction of the boxes is much more in line with the organic nature of Eva Hesse’s work. Rauschenberg’s movement of deconstruction, his action of working the materials is laid bare for the viewer in the remnant tacked to the wall. As with Hesse, it appears as an intuitive interaction with materials and exploration without priori. Rauschenberg strips the boxes of endowed functionality and makes it apparent that signification is an attribute not of the boxes themselves but of the human activity of their making. What remains on the wall is simply an indexical trace of Rauschenberg’s actions. In this, the boxes become more full than empty.
The boxes’ culturally agreed upon functionality lies in their ability to contain, carry, and to be disgorged of content. Their meaning and value is dependent on content and cultural context. But this functionality of the box has been discarded and dissolves through the process of material deconstruction. Rauschenberg has ascribed his boxes with new value and meaning dependent on the context and language of the gallery viewer. As the boxes lose their premanufactured significance, the language preexisting upon their surface disassociates from the boxes identity as box. It is a refusal to be what mass culture has dictated. Meaning becomes contextual allowing the boxless box to become other. It has been made fleshy. It has been made man. For many it will be difficult to see beyond the box as box and to let it be other. Yet Rauschenberg has clearly made it other. Through the recontextuallization of the boxes the text printed on the surfaces of the boxless boxes take on human connotations. LAY FLAT. DO NOT STAND ON END. Which of course is exactly what I am NOT doing as the viewer. 1.) I am standing, not laying flat. 2.) I am vertical, on my end, not horizontal and evenly distributed. Rauschenberg has followed the texts’ command with his objects, his boxes, and yet I stand stuck in a position of opposition. He plays with me? Teases me? The piece is critically dependent on this play of deconstructed language that forces me, the viewer, to interact with the work.
Reference, meaning, order and authority are disconnected in Rauschenberg’s work by the deconstruction of concurrent art movements, materials, functionality and language. He has made me want to press my cheek tightly to the boxes’ surface, feel their fleshy nature. He has helped me disengage that which is signified by the box and alter its meaning. He has challenged me to lay flat to view his work, but my culpability to the artificial constructs of museum behavior inhibits me. Most importantly, though, he has made me laugh at art and my interaction or lack there of with it.
Kathryn Kelley. 2007.
Sunday, April 08, 2007
Sunday, March 25, 2007
in the space of absence (in process)
industrial foam found in broken bales off of commerce street. found useless tire tubes. each pod/womb piece is 8 to 9' in height and range from 8 to 18 inches in diameter
detail
detail
Friday, March 02, 2007
Never blog when tired.
Mode of exception, the norm.
State of emergency, the norm.
Presences of artificially generated fear, the norm.
In perpetual transit, I am endlessly waiting.
Spectacle.
Spectator.
Speck.
Reacting against our spectator culture, I move away from spectation toward production, not mechanized but sensualized by the hand, by my hand. Mind and body work in synch in a non-knowing knowing. Meaning emerges from labor. Consciousness swims out of the interweaving of mind and body. Visceral making—visceral knowing. It is my rebellion.
State of emergency, the norm.
Presences of artificially generated fear, the norm.
In perpetual transit, I am endlessly waiting.
Spectacle.
Spectator.
Speck.
Reacting against our spectator culture, I move away from spectation toward production, not mechanized but sensualized by the hand, by my hand. Mind and body work in synch in a non-knowing knowing. Meaning emerges from labor. Consciousness swims out of the interweaving of mind and body. Visceral making—visceral knowing. It is my rebellion.
Thursday, March 01, 2007
Into the space of absence
Process shot (meaning I am not finished yet.)
TITLE In a culture imbued with a perpetual ambient pornography, where sex is everywhere except in sex, hunger everywhere except in hunger, having everywhere except in having, experience everywhere except in experience, I am left with an incessant wanting that has lost both its subject and object. This self substrate of wanting bares witness to an undifferentiated loss, an absence. Into this space of absence, I fall.
Found foam, truck tire tubes and baling wire. 9' x 1' x 1'.
Sunday, February 11, 2007
Against my better judgment, I open myself.
[methodology]
I trust the process—research, collective critical analysis, emergent forms from visceral object making, alternate views that manifest themselves via found objects, questioning my assumptions about the nature of things, and daily writing. But most importantly I have found that if I force myself to remain open, open to alternate views, open to outside direction, I learn. To learn requires me to make mistakes, to be wrong. By allowing for failure, attempting to not avoid that which hurts, I am able to explore new things in that illusive space were sense and nonsense become interchangeable. This type of experimentation surprisingly often produces something quite coherent. Openness also allows me to recognize the herd (the mechanical human drone state which avoids painful mental, physical, and social conflict resulting in a deadening of the potentiality for change) and to navigate to its outer edges. I cannot avoid the herd (I am the herd); I cannot avoid culture (I am my culture). But on the skirts of the herd, my movement and exploration is less hampered by cultural dictates; more options are available to me; my assumptions become more transparent. I cannot fight the system. But I can learn to spread my proverbial wings and glide within the existing currents; flicking my wrists to alter my path. Openness, even when everything within me screams “NO!” improves me. Without it, I would remain the same. And what a boring life that would be.
I trust the process—research, collective critical analysis, emergent forms from visceral object making, alternate views that manifest themselves via found objects, questioning my assumptions about the nature of things, and daily writing. But most importantly I have found that if I force myself to remain open, open to alternate views, open to outside direction, I learn. To learn requires me to make mistakes, to be wrong. By allowing for failure, attempting to not avoid that which hurts, I am able to explore new things in that illusive space were sense and nonsense become interchangeable. This type of experimentation surprisingly often produces something quite coherent. Openness also allows me to recognize the herd (the mechanical human drone state which avoids painful mental, physical, and social conflict resulting in a deadening of the potentiality for change) and to navigate to its outer edges. I cannot avoid the herd (I am the herd); I cannot avoid culture (I am my culture). But on the skirts of the herd, my movement and exploration is less hampered by cultural dictates; more options are available to me; my assumptions become more transparent. I cannot fight the system. But I can learn to spread my proverbial wings and glide within the existing currents; flicking my wrists to alter my path. Openness, even when everything within me screams “NO!” improves me. Without it, I would remain the same. And what a boring life that would be.
RESEARCH
“Impossible to have found so little a thing, in so great a clutter of thick, and deep grass.” Nathaniel Fairfax, 1674.
Research is an untangling of a cluttered, clotted mass of coagulated knowledge. I have so many questions about culture, the self and the nature of existence that research is obligatory. The more I research, the more I know; the more I know, the more I recognize that we do NOT know. Supposition is great; the factual is minimal. That we are missing the obvious seems apparent and it weighs on me. So I dredge the archives of theory on human development, object relations, social constructionism, cultural materialism, and my faith.
This research becomes critical to my making. The work is a vehicle for my ideas, my understanding or lack there of. I hunger for research (consumption) and art making (production). One without the other would make the remainder useless and of no value to me. I require them to be conjoined, equal in value when paired, worthless when separated.
I like to believe my work begins with this research, but this is not the case. There is significant play in idea/image/object development between the research, the collective critical analysis, visceral making, the found object, and writing. Each piece of work is an amalgamation of these processes. Research is critical and I thrive in its flow.
Research is an untangling of a cluttered, clotted mass of coagulated knowledge. I have so many questions about culture, the self and the nature of existence that research is obligatory. The more I research, the more I know; the more I know, the more I recognize that we do NOT know. Supposition is great; the factual is minimal. That we are missing the obvious seems apparent and it weighs on me. So I dredge the archives of theory on human development, object relations, social constructionism, cultural materialism, and my faith.
This research becomes critical to my making. The work is a vehicle for my ideas, my understanding or lack there of. I hunger for research (consumption) and art making (production). One without the other would make the remainder useless and of no value to me. I require them to be conjoined, equal in value when paired, worthless when separated.
I like to believe my work begins with this research, but this is not the case. There is significant play in idea/image/object development between the research, the collective critical analysis, visceral making, the found object, and writing. Each piece of work is an amalgamation of these processes. Research is critical and I thrive in its flow.
COLLECTIVE CRITICAL ANALYSIS
The collective provides an external motivator for following through on my interests, research, and form making. Furthermore it forces me to take the idea, the one that usually sits just out of reach, and stand up, snatch it, and force it into the box of language. The group enables me push and pull on it until I am able to knock off the rough edges and create something coherent. They also reveal to me when I have pushed the idea to far into the realm of nonsense (bullshit), or when I need to eject the idea totally because it is simply wrong. Often they suggest an entirely new tangent that I had not considered. I especially enjoy a group that mixes together what appears to be opposites, left and right, straight and gay, Christian and agnostic, Shiner Bock drinkers and Diet Coke drinkers, and east and west. A diverse group quickly reveals the fallacies I hold, but it also exposes the currents of commonality.
QUESTIONING ASSUMPTIONS
Water and oil do not mix, therefore plaster (that forms through a chemical reaction with water) and tar (an oil based product) should not mix. A positive times a positive is positive. A negative times a negative is positive. A positive times a negative is negative. Why? How is this like tar and plaster? How is this like my internal nature of goodness and shadow? So I set out to mix the tar and plaster. I built a simple mold, a cube, to test my questions. The tar and plaster mixed but didn’t mix. Wrestling within the cube, within the light and shadows, an emergent beauty, an odd sense of wholeness and redemption surfaced. I built a better mold into which I could pour 18 cubes at a time. More was better. I explored the relationship of the cube to the self—the open self and the closed self; the compartmentalized, fragmented self and the whole self; the empty self and the saturated self.
FOUND OBJECTS
I collect things from the road side, both the incidental by-products of urban dwelling, such as shredded tire treads along the highway, and intentional discards left out for big trash pick up. Why do I do this? What is it about certain objects that draws me to collect them?
Decay.
I am drawn to both 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. Decay’s reference to ensuing death serves only to bare witness to life and decay becomes terribly rich, with a fullness of character. So I collect these decayed objects. I hold onto them for awhile. Cogitate. Eventually the formal and symbolic elements of the objects and my current research meld. Then I make.
Decay.
I am drawn to both 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. Decay’s reference to ensuing death serves only to bare witness to life and decay becomes terribly rich, with a fullness of character. So I collect these decayed objects. I hold onto them for awhile. Cogitate. Eventually the formal and symbolic elements of the objects and my current research meld. Then I make.
TACTILE MAKING
I trust the process, I definitely trust my body knowledge, the way in which it reacts and works certain materials. Tar. I work it directly with my hands. I empty myself—forging a direct and raw connection with it.
But, why tar? It is industrial; we are industrial. It is everywhere in our urban environment of which I am a part—streets, roofs, parking lots, exercise trails, plastics, etc. It is carbon based; I am carbon based. It is decay (fossil fuel); I am decay. It off gases...well you get the point. It is nasty, dirty, and gets everywhere, sticks and won’t release. These characteristics of tar appeal to my sense of our own dark nature—all the wanting and taking, the unrestricted selfishness. Besides, for a moment, I terribly enjoy being disgustingly dirty. Tar is my rebellion against the slick and fake in myself and our culture. We try so hard to be beautiful, smart, strong, and likeable, yet we can be ugly, weak, stupid and repelling. We don’t seem to have a whole lot of control over these things. As with tar, I have some control but not much. It is ugly, messy, and unpredictable but can be worked into something beautiful, sumptuous, and sophisticated.
Sometimes I make just to work the material and do not consider the symbolism or end product until later. For instance with The Shadowland series, I just needed to hammer twenty seven pounds of nails. It was about process, about visceral making. The black nail painting was the first of my artwork to be accepted by the art community and my design professors.
Initially, I had to consider scale. How large could I work and still manage to move it or hang it? So the piece became self referential, about two feet by six feet. I cut my first frame and stretched my first canvas (plywood on two by fours). Then I began. I smeared a little cold roofing tar in one corner and pounded nails into it. Pain is a quick teacher and I found that it would be difficult to use varying size nails. I discarded the found nails I had collected and went to Home Depot. I settle on one size and continued my pounding. Latex gloves (nitrile are too thin; they rip to easily) became a must have item. Baby oil, a gentle alternative to chemical solvents, for removing tar (and oil paint) from the hands, face, arms, and tools (plus it functions great as a mold release agent) was also required. Back to pounding. Tar. Nail. Tar. Nail. Tar. Nail. Hang from fence; pop back; straighten up carefully. Tar. Nail. Tar. Nail. Tar. Nail. Tar. Nail. Tar. Nail. Tar. Nail. Tar and nails for ten days straight, four to six hours a day, my physical limit. Hang from fence; pop back; straighten up carefully. Lather up with baby oil and detar self. At this point, I discarded my watch and to this day have not gone back to it—very un-American. I have learned to trust my natural pace versus the artificial units defined by the cultural mechanism of time.
Robert Rauschenberg’s black and white paintings, his combines embedded with everyday objects, and the Menil’s primitive collection brought out my own inclinations for the study of darkness and light, goodness and evil. Being egocentrical, I primarily considered how my own goodness gets lost in my shadow. This led to a more formal study of the self—theories of human development and social constructionism. These self considerations and research guided my work.
The size of my hands and the rhythm of hammering created repetitive patterns. I had to force myself to resist this patterning behavior, resist sameness, resist what my body so easily wanted to do. There was a working tension back and forth between my visceral body movement and my mind’s need to control the process and outcome. I slipped back and forth between these two parts of my self. My emotional response to what was visually emerging shaped this complex interaction of information processing and production.
This working between mind and body became a form of focused play. As with children during play, a set of rules (arbitrary?) was defined, “don’t make patterns with the nails.” Play became about following, testing, and manipulating the rules. PLAY. The body, the mind in rebellion, in synch; the nonsense and sense merged as a coherent object.
A coherent object, an art object, became a variable in which to store meaning, much like the self.
How can tar and twenty-seven pounds of nails be art? How can tire scrapes hobbled together be art? How can fifty year old twine and discarded metal shavings embedded in tar be art? How can these fit together to be art? NONSENSE! Yet because the work functions in a way that calls the viewer to overlay his/her own personal meaning onto the work, sense emerges. Why? Carl Jung would argue that the art object is a manifestation of cultural dysfunction, that the art is symptomatic of the collective’s turmoil with self, culture and the world. The art making becomes a lightning rod—it attracts desire for order which is disrupted by disorder, disorder creates tension, tension leads to making. And others within culture recognize an element of truth in the work, therefore sense a connection and derive meaning.
“...it is awakened whenever the times are out of joint and a human society is committed to a serious error...When conscious life is characterized by one-sidedness and by a false attitude, then they are activated—one might say, “instinctively”—and come to light in the dreams of individuals and the visions of artists and seers, thus restoring the psychic equilibrium of the epoch.” Carl Gustav Jung
Am I a product of my culture with my discomforts in cultural praxis and the self being played out in my art making?
But, why tar? It is industrial; we are industrial. It is everywhere in our urban environment of which I am a part—streets, roofs, parking lots, exercise trails, plastics, etc. It is carbon based; I am carbon based. It is decay (fossil fuel); I am decay. It off gases...well you get the point. It is nasty, dirty, and gets everywhere, sticks and won’t release. These characteristics of tar appeal to my sense of our own dark nature—all the wanting and taking, the unrestricted selfishness. Besides, for a moment, I terribly enjoy being disgustingly dirty. Tar is my rebellion against the slick and fake in myself and our culture. We try so hard to be beautiful, smart, strong, and likeable, yet we can be ugly, weak, stupid and repelling. We don’t seem to have a whole lot of control over these things. As with tar, I have some control but not much. It is ugly, messy, and unpredictable but can be worked into something beautiful, sumptuous, and sophisticated.
Sometimes I make just to work the material and do not consider the symbolism or end product until later. For instance with The Shadowland series, I just needed to hammer twenty seven pounds of nails. It was about process, about visceral making. The black nail painting was the first of my artwork to be accepted by the art community and my design professors.
Initially, I had to consider scale. How large could I work and still manage to move it or hang it? So the piece became self referential, about two feet by six feet. I cut my first frame and stretched my first canvas (plywood on two by fours). Then I began. I smeared a little cold roofing tar in one corner and pounded nails into it. Pain is a quick teacher and I found that it would be difficult to use varying size nails. I discarded the found nails I had collected and went to Home Depot. I settle on one size and continued my pounding. Latex gloves (nitrile are too thin; they rip to easily) became a must have item. Baby oil, a gentle alternative to chemical solvents, for removing tar (and oil paint) from the hands, face, arms, and tools (plus it functions great as a mold release agent) was also required. Back to pounding. Tar. Nail. Tar. Nail. Tar. Nail. Hang from fence; pop back; straighten up carefully. Tar. Nail. Tar. Nail. Tar. Nail. Tar. Nail. Tar. Nail. Tar. Nail. Tar and nails for ten days straight, four to six hours a day, my physical limit. Hang from fence; pop back; straighten up carefully. Lather up with baby oil and detar self. At this point, I discarded my watch and to this day have not gone back to it—very un-American. I have learned to trust my natural pace versus the artificial units defined by the cultural mechanism of time.
Robert Rauschenberg’s black and white paintings, his combines embedded with everyday objects, and the Menil’s primitive collection brought out my own inclinations for the study of darkness and light, goodness and evil. Being egocentrical, I primarily considered how my own goodness gets lost in my shadow. This led to a more formal study of the self—theories of human development and social constructionism. These self considerations and research guided my work.
The size of my hands and the rhythm of hammering created repetitive patterns. I had to force myself to resist this patterning behavior, resist sameness, resist what my body so easily wanted to do. There was a working tension back and forth between my visceral body movement and my mind’s need to control the process and outcome. I slipped back and forth between these two parts of my self. My emotional response to what was visually emerging shaped this complex interaction of information processing and production.
This working between mind and body became a form of focused play. As with children during play, a set of rules (arbitrary?) was defined, “don’t make patterns with the nails.” Play became about following, testing, and manipulating the rules. PLAY. The body, the mind in rebellion, in synch; the nonsense and sense merged as a coherent object.
A coherent object, an art object, became a variable in which to store meaning, much like the self.
How can tar and twenty-seven pounds of nails be art? How can tire scrapes hobbled together be art? How can fifty year old twine and discarded metal shavings embedded in tar be art? How can these fit together to be art? NONSENSE! Yet because the work functions in a way that calls the viewer to overlay his/her own personal meaning onto the work, sense emerges. Why? Carl Jung would argue that the art object is a manifestation of cultural dysfunction, that the art is symptomatic of the collective’s turmoil with self, culture and the world. The art making becomes a lightning rod—it attracts desire for order which is disrupted by disorder, disorder creates tension, tension leads to making. And others within culture recognize an element of truth in the work, therefore sense a connection and derive meaning.
“...it is awakened whenever the times are out of joint and a human society is committed to a serious error...When conscious life is characterized by one-sidedness and by a false attitude, then they are activated—one might say, “instinctively”—and come to light in the dreams of individuals and the visions of artists and seers, thus restoring the psychic equilibrium of the epoch.” Carl Gustav Jung
Am I a product of my culture with my discomforts in cultural praxis and the self being played out in my art making?
A step that brings me to a stop
Surrender.
Surrender infers war. Am I at war? War with whom? Myself? God? Other? Surrender to whom? Surrender what?
This also infers that I NEED to surrender? Why? Why? Why?
How do I know when to surrender and when to fight? Who gets to decide?
This is so unAmerican. And I am so very much American...no doubt. I hate the idea of surrender. I am not saying your wrong in that I may need to do this, but the thought of surrender is well so very un-pullyourselfupbythebootstraps! And I am still pulling!
However, I do compromise (does that count?). Is surrender like submissive? Shoot! I suck at that too!
The idea of surrender sends me into serious rebellion! Based on that apparently I am at war. Dang.
Surrender infers war. Am I at war? War with whom? Myself? God? Other? Surrender to whom? Surrender what?
This also infers that I NEED to surrender? Why? Why? Why?
How do I know when to surrender and when to fight? Who gets to decide?
This is so unAmerican. And I am so very much American...no doubt. I hate the idea of surrender. I am not saying your wrong in that I may need to do this, but the thought of surrender is well so very un-pullyourselfupbythebootstraps! And I am still pulling!
However, I do compromise (does that count?). Is surrender like submissive? Shoot! I suck at that too!
The idea of surrender sends me into serious rebellion! Based on that apparently I am at war. Dang.
I dissect the self only to discover it is but a mere flesh wound!
My design, sculpture and writing skim the surface of the construct of the self. There is an illusion that the self is an autonomous and masterful entity. Yet the self seems to function as a variable, a storage container for the dictates of society where the current cultural matrix defines what it means to be human—our limits, talents, expectations, and prohibitions. It tells us who we are and how we relate to the world. Emotions and identity are cooped as microregulators of culture. Want is appropriated as need. Consumer stimulation, pacification, and diversion are used to reinforce and reproduce the loci of cultural powers. If culture moves us toward unrestricted selfishness, we embrace our narcissism and revel in it. There is a struggle between the illusive independent self and the self’s dependence on culture. The self is incomplete, empty; culture completes.
Is this so? Are we social constructs? Why do I experience tension when I go along? Or when I resist? Can I enact change on the self or culture? Or am I impotent as a factor in change? Is it possible to step outside of the current consumer paradigm?
Who is in charge anyway?
How is change defined? Does it refer to a fundamental difference in a state of being or can change be just behavioral/superficial, as in managing ones funk versus no longer having the funk.
Are we purely complex systems of stimuli/response? What makes us uniquely human? What takes us beyond just being an object under the influence? What do we experience that is not based on our senses/stimuli/response?
How much risk is involved in thinking differently, behaving differently? Being different? What is the association/link between risk and energy? How might energy be stockpiled to use in risk taking in order to instigate change?
What is the role of solitude and group in change and change maintenance? Aren’t both required? Is the balance unique to each individual?
Is change possible?
I dissect the self only to discover it is but a mere flesh wound!
Is this so? Are we social constructs? Why do I experience tension when I go along? Or when I resist? Can I enact change on the self or culture? Or am I impotent as a factor in change? Is it possible to step outside of the current consumer paradigm?
Who is in charge anyway?
How is change defined? Does it refer to a fundamental difference in a state of being or can change be just behavioral/superficial, as in managing ones funk versus no longer having the funk.
Are we purely complex systems of stimuli/response? What makes us uniquely human? What takes us beyond just being an object under the influence? What do we experience that is not based on our senses/stimuli/response?
How much risk is involved in thinking differently, behaving differently? Being different? What is the association/link between risk and energy? How might energy be stockpiled to use in risk taking in order to instigate change?
What is the role of solitude and group in change and change maintenance? Aren’t both required? Is the balance unique to each individual?
Is change possible?
I dissect the self only to discover it is but a mere flesh wound!
Friday, January 19, 2007
Modes of conformity
Solo exhibition
Bunker Hill City Hall
11977 Memorial Drive
M-F 8am-4:30pm
January Through March 29
modes of conformity: i make, i remake, i unmake and with the accumulation of the remainder i displace my own culpability in the hunting and gathering of capital culture
sticks, wood, rope, resin.
~4.25'x4.25' each cube (~5' long x 3' height)
kathryn kelley. 2007
Review by Andrea Sutton of the Memorial Examiner
Bunker Hill City Hall
11977 Memorial Drive
M-F 8am-4:30pm
January Through March 29
modes of conformity: i make, i remake, i unmake and with the accumulation of the remainder i displace my own culpability in the hunting and gathering of capital culture
sticks, wood, rope, resin.
~4.25'x4.25' each cube (~5' long x 3' height)
kathryn kelley. 2007
Review by Andrea Sutton of the Memorial Examiner
Saturday, January 13, 2007
Folds and Stacked: An exercise in restraint
CSAW exhibition opening
January 13-February 1, 2007
Commerce Street Artists Warehouse
2315 Commerce Street, Houston, 77002
Tenant gallery:
Stacked and Folds: an exercise in restraint
with Kathryn Kelley
The constructs reference the body, the female form—the contrived fashion in which I attempt to coerce my own behavior to harness my nature and by shear will alter my being. I continue to create artificial constructs in this futile attempt to be other, to be self—I sacrifice the real, the intimate, and the honest, for the illusion of otherness. I am other. In this I lose my being, become embedded in the herd—to the cliff, to the cliff, I run. Within this tightly packed unit, I am one. I am none. Nostrils flare with the stench of sameness. I am the same. The spectacle becomes the spectator. The spectator becomes the speck. It drifts along the surface and is nothing. It repeats its self. I repeat myself.
Eventually I stop.
Collecting, harvesting, acquiring the decayed, the discarded, both industrial and natural, from the street side, I find myself viscerally reacting against the cult of the instant, the cult of new, the cult of forever young, forever fertile with pushed up breasts and swollen lips. Cognitively, emotionally, I am in full participation—loving the hunt, loving the gathering—mine, mine, mine. I am the lover of stuff. But as artist, what does it mean to not manipulate my materials making them mine? If the artist’s hand is only in the harvesting and storing, am I artist? So I collect the urban refuse and force myself to release the mine, mine, mine, mindset. I let the materials BE. And when I let them be, I find innate emergent impressions referencing the female form.
I am female. How do I release the frenetic agitated female images mediated by culture? What does it mean to be female? Is my power really only in the swell of my breast and the heat of my thighs? I am no longer sure of what it means to be female. What is femininity? I look to my aging female friends—Cynthia, Margo, Susan, and even Pam and Lori. In their decay, their pain and love, I learn what it is to be female. Their faces are etched with life lived. They have not run from the processes of living. They are not plastic. They attempt to live honestly and value others. They are female. They are human. They are beautiful.
It is in the depths when I wade out from the shallows that I find life and my being.
In the decayed, I find beauty, in the released, honesty.
January 13-February 1, 2007
Commerce Street Artists Warehouse
2315 Commerce Street, Houston, 77002
Tenant gallery:
Stacked and Folds: an exercise in restraint
with Kathryn Kelley
The constructs reference the body, the female form—the contrived fashion in which I attempt to coerce my own behavior to harness my nature and by shear will alter my being. I continue to create artificial constructs in this futile attempt to be other, to be self—I sacrifice the real, the intimate, and the honest, for the illusion of otherness. I am other. In this I lose my being, become embedded in the herd—to the cliff, to the cliff, I run. Within this tightly packed unit, I am one. I am none. Nostrils flare with the stench of sameness. I am the same. The spectacle becomes the spectator. The spectator becomes the speck. It drifts along the surface and is nothing. It repeats its self. I repeat myself.
Eventually I stop.
Collecting, harvesting, acquiring the decayed, the discarded, both industrial and natural, from the street side, I find myself viscerally reacting against the cult of the instant, the cult of new, the cult of forever young, forever fertile with pushed up breasts and swollen lips. Cognitively, emotionally, I am in full participation—loving the hunt, loving the gathering—mine, mine, mine. I am the lover of stuff. But as artist, what does it mean to not manipulate my materials making them mine? If the artist’s hand is only in the harvesting and storing, am I artist? So I collect the urban refuse and force myself to release the mine, mine, mine, mindset. I let the materials BE. And when I let them be, I find innate emergent impressions referencing the female form.
I am female. How do I release the frenetic agitated female images mediated by culture? What does it mean to be female? Is my power really only in the swell of my breast and the heat of my thighs? I am no longer sure of what it means to be female. What is femininity? I look to my aging female friends—Cynthia, Margo, Susan, and even Pam and Lori. In their decay, their pain and love, I learn what it is to be female. Their faces are etched with life lived. They have not run from the processes of living. They are not plastic. They attempt to live honestly and value others. They are female. They are human. They are beautiful.
It is in the depths when I wade out from the shallows that I find life and my being.
In the decayed, I find beauty, in the released, honesty.
Sunday, December 17, 2006
Becoming unsafe
Design has shaped my thinking, developing an analytical approach to image making. Yet, design is safe. It is my easy way out of vulnerability and commitment. Image making takes shape within client parameters. Analysis and creativity is required; ownership is not. Though much of myself comes out in my design, emotional safety resides in my ability to divert primary authorship onto the client.
With art making, the work becomes my own—risky. Putting myself out there, committing to say this is about me—my brain, my process, my hand—it is an extension of myself. I am not the sharpest tack in the box or the most original, but this is my own. And, THIS is not safe.
I have reached that space in life where my strength of ego and self-will allow me, draw me, to take the risk of “becoming.” Becoming who I am, not that self defined by “shoulds.” Change is difficult. Self sabotage common. Yet, I am moving into that self that has been simmering below my surface for a very long time.
With art making, the work becomes my own—risky. Putting myself out there, committing to say this is about me—my brain, my process, my hand—it is an extension of myself. I am not the sharpest tack in the box or the most original, but this is my own. And, THIS is not safe.
I have reached that space in life where my strength of ego and self-will allow me, draw me, to take the risk of “becoming.” Becoming who I am, not that self defined by “shoulds.” Change is difficult. Self sabotage common. Yet, I am moving into that self that has been simmering below my surface for a very long time.
I am consumer, lover of stuff.
I am female, pink appeals.
I am forty-four, decay has begun.
I am visual, language challenged.
I am seeker, life teaches.
I am designer, anally fixated.
I am watcher, society astounds.
I am pattern seer, micro macro, macro micro.
I am dysfunction, I function.
I am spiritual, Christ calls.
I am tactile, let me touch it.
I am American, arrogance assumed.
This surfaced self binds together the fragments of my many selves into a unit, into a whole. And as I step into this whole/fragmented self, the sheer tactility of my art making overwhelms me, sketching naked people, pushing paint, welding metal, hammering nails, a brow slick with sweat—I find myself. Deep satisfaction. Maturation.
My should self has never known passion. My design self has been safe. An electric current of fear courses through me as passion moves to the forefront. Art informs my design. Design informs my art. I step to the edge of change and waiver there. The safe and unsafe are merging and I am becoming.
Thursday, November 30, 2006
Unhinging the Distant exhibition at CSAW
On view through December 28
by appointment Kathryn Kelley kkelley@houston.rr.com
Commerce Street Artists Warehouse, 2315 Commerce Street, Houston, TX 77002
by appointment Kathryn Kelley kkelley@houston.rr.com
Commerce Street Artists Warehouse, 2315 Commerce Street, Houston, TX 77002
The show, Unhinging the Distant, includes recent MFA graduates and soon to graduate emerging artists, Doug Cason, Woody Golden, Leslie Magdaleno and Emily Sloan. Curated by Kathryn Kelley.
Dredged archives of near history become the source material for these artists. We are drawn close by strangely intimate narratives that emerge from the altered objects as they are unhinged from the past. Your inclination will be to touch and know. Ponder as you will, but no touching please.
Doug Cason’s study will be recreated. Why? Because when I enter his space I lose my sense of time. I sit in a comfortable old chair draped with a rich purple throw surrounded by old books. Am I in a study? As my eyes focus on the objects around me, I realize that what was old has been made new. A beautiful sense of the now and the antiquated are interwoven.
Upon the surface of the books are paintings in miniature, narratives not of the internal stories which are marked out line by line, word by word, but ones influenced by the embossed text on the spine and Doug’s research and now moments. Enticingly small, delicate and detailed are the book paintings. Juxtaposed to the shelved texts in the room and hanging in the entry corridor are old portrait photographs of unknown individuals. As with the books, altered narratives are created through scratching out and painting new.
The space is private and rich yet I am unsettled by the realization of the hidden messages in the arrangement of the space and the sense of interruption as Doug’s altered ego surfaces in one of his Zepeda paintings. I am reminded that I am in the present where nothing is sacred. I am now.
Woody Golden unlike Doug does not cross out line by line word by word but instead carefully glues each page of the text together shutting of the source narrative. Woody then proceeds to carve into the tomes essentially digging out its’ primary content. This he carves into various shapes and then places back into the gutted text. My first inclination when approaching Woody’s work is to retrieve the carved object, pull it close and caress it. I beg permission. The artifact is surprisingly cool under my touch. Woody is obtuse about the recasting of its narrative. But as the viewer, I cannot help but to find meaning.
Leslie Magdaleno, working both in fiber and collage, casts her gaze upon the feminine. Spanning forward from the era of her mother Leslie explores the female form through traditional techniques of knitting and sewing to create two and three dimensional female forms. These forms are both delicate and full.
Emily Sloan, recently recognized for the collaborative installation Burning House on HWY 59 near Lufkin, works sculpturally back and forth between the representational and the abstract. In neither case does the narrative stand still. Emily’s work either is affixed to or references the antiquated and is highly tactile in nature.
Defense mechanisms of self enclosure
In thinking about critic and curator Okwui Enwezor's lecture at MFAH. Intimacy. Fear. Proximity. Disturbing nearness. Loss of shallow distance. Contamination. Enclosure. Enclusion. Exclusion. Exception. Empire of Secrets. Endless waiting. Out of place. Out of time. Out of tune. Profound unsettling. Mode of eradication. Intolerance. Non-recognition. Residue. Degeneration of public space. Artificial enclosure. "...The 'state of emergency' in which we live is not the exception but the rule" (walter benjamin). 
8' x 5' x 18"
tar, twigs, string, and board
November 2006
tar, twigs, string, and board
November 2006
Tuesday, November 14, 2006
ArtCrawl Houston
Saturday, November 18, 2-9pm
www.artcrawlhouston.com
2315 Commerce Street Houston, TX 77002.
My studio (J) is in Commerce Street Artists Warehouse CSAW (yellow building with 2 big round saw blades on the front). I am in studio J in the back of the building with metal door. Free metro shuttles available They run the circuit of art studios/warehouses in the downtown area. Once you find a parking spot you should be good for your visit.
There is an exhibition in our main gallery and our studios will be open for you to visit. Hope you can come out for a fun day.
Saturday, November 11, 2006
Tuesday, November 07, 2006
Sunday, July 02, 2006
Luis Jimenez
My husband and I spent the morning of June 11 with Luis. He took us on a tour of his studio (told us the ins and outs of his public art pieces), then drove us up a bumpy dirt road through a small valley to see his home (and goats), and then off to a little resturant, just down the road from Hondo, for burritos. He and my husband hit it off well, telling one another stories of bow hunting and bird watching. More and more stories each worth listening to, each bringing a smile or a laugh. Our day with Luis concluded with him sketching on a napkin a map of must see parts of New Mexico for us. We began our NM adventure following his map. So it came as quite a shock to find that he passed away a few days after our visit due to a studio accident.--
Luis' was a master of bringing out the best in other artists.
Becoming bête comme un peintre six straight hours every Wednesday for three months under the guidance of Luis in the Figure Drawing Studio at the University of Houston.
Six hours. Naked model. My arm seeks across the page. Brain tires. Arm sags. I prop it up with the other. Finally the deadening weight is too great. Grease pencil shifted to recessive hand. Brain shuts off. Only sense of sight and touch remain intact. Searching lines find form. Tactile pleasure. Luis strokes ego.
How is it that everyone in the class improves? No, really everyone. It is Luis coming around and deciphering the one thing that is working in each students drawing. Quietly he points it out to the student (who cherishes his praise). Suddenly this one element in the drawing begins taking over more and more of each successive drawing. Each student maintains his or her own voice, but it becomes more clear, stronger, and much more interesting.
Luis brings out in me an inclination and passion for form making. I pursue it because of him. I am artist because of him.
My path is changed because of this man. I am deeply saddened by his untimely death.
The Shadowlands
The angst of modern cultural addictions permeates my existence. The dictates of mediated culture, the dictates of self are so commingled they are indistinguishable—inseparable. Where I begin and end is lost.
As society moves further and further away from direct experience and once, twice removed becomes the norm with intermediaries carefully massaging the information we receive, I am compelled to work in a very direct manner. The more distanced and disconnected I become from that which seems real, the more I empty myself into the tactility of my work. A direct, raw connection is forged and it becomes a visceral response to my struggle with self, capital culture, and the enormity of the vast slippery feeling I have that something is terribly wrong within
our mediated cosmos.
Black and white cease in purity. Decay’s reference to ensuing death serves only to bare witness to life. Each becomes embedded with an otherness. And my own darkness pierces me.
Recurrent patterns/habits emanate from the brokenness of self. Tension resides where my good and shadows run alongside one another. I am deeply tarnished. Conflicted with contradictions. The very thing I hate, the thing I swear I won’t do or say, that is exactly what I do.
Abstract and organic fields of discarded urban refuse embedded in industrial materials becomes a metaphor for self. Simultaneously the self becomes a stand-in for a cultural expression of communal beliefs and emotion which for the most part are denied.
I am in the shadowlands. YET. Not embracing, but in spite of, I find hope wrestled from these shadows—an emergent beauty, an odd sense of wholeness and redemption.
As society moves further and further away from direct experience and once, twice removed becomes the norm with intermediaries carefully massaging the information we receive, I am compelled to work in a very direct manner. The more distanced and disconnected I become from that which seems real, the more I empty myself into the tactility of my work. A direct, raw connection is forged and it becomes a visceral response to my struggle with self, capital culture, and the enormity of the vast slippery feeling I have that something is terribly wrong within
our mediated cosmos.
Black and white cease in purity. Decay’s reference to ensuing death serves only to bare witness to life. Each becomes embedded with an otherness. And my own darkness pierces me.
Recurrent patterns/habits emanate from the brokenness of self. Tension resides where my good and shadows run alongside one another. I am deeply tarnished. Conflicted with contradictions. The very thing I hate, the thing I swear I won’t do or say, that is exactly what I do.
Abstract and organic fields of discarded urban refuse embedded in industrial materials becomes a metaphor for self. Simultaneously the self becomes a stand-in for a cultural expression of communal beliefs and emotion which for the most part are denied.
I am in the shadowlands. YET. Not embracing, but in spite of, I find hope wrestled from these shadows—an emergent beauty, an odd sense of wholeness and redemption.
I hate the idea of surrender
I hate the idea of surrender. I am not saying you're wrong in that I may need to do this but the thought of surrender is well so very ...unpullyourselfupbythebootstraps! And I am still pulling.
64 blocks, ~9'x9'
4"x4"x5" each block
tar, plaster, baling wire
2006
I hate the idea of surrender
Surrender.This infers war.
Am I at war? War with whom? Myself? God? Other? Surrender to whom? Surrender to what?
102 blocks, ~2'x6',
4"x4"x5" each block
tar, plaster, wooden shelf
2006
I love my husband; why can't I be nice
Black painting
triptych, 2'x6' each
found boards, tar
found rope, tar
2006
Consciousness empties itself of its content; I just keep talking
Black paintingtriptych, 2'x6' each
tar, tires on board
2006
The Shadowlands
Black paintingtriptych, 2x6 each
nails, tar, rust on board
tires, tar on board
tar, rust, rope on board
White painting
2'x2' each
satin (from 1950s)
paint chips
July 2005
I am dysfunction; I function. My own darkness pierces me
3'x5'x7'.Steel ring, tar, tree, cinder blocks, wire.
2005
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