Renting Space in Painting

Growing up as a mostly poor kid has some advantages.  With eight kids, my family could not keep up with the latest fashion trends, going for the Sears store brand shoes instead of the Nike's.  We were always two or three video game systems behind the current higher resolution system. My parents drove cars that were old, not so old they were cool but more like "what kind of car is that?" kind of old.  Okay, so we were that peculiar kind of American poor where we still had clothes, video games, and cars.  But still, we were continually forced to consider how we could fix up what was broken (like the time my dad used a metal baking pan to replace the housing around our damaged AMC Gremlin's headlight- genius!), fake our way into being stylish (like sharing the few cool outfits that  my older brother and I had between us when we started attending separate schools, so nobody would notice), and in general to just make do with what we had.  I remember countless times getting home from school to find that our living room had been completely reconfigured.  This was always my mom's doing.  Something about living with nine other people always lead her to daydream about a larger, smarter, and more custom built house, one with coordinating, contemporary furnishings.  What we had were cramped "eclectic" rooms furnished with the odd pieces that had been salvaged from the neighbors curb or hauled from a garage sale.  My mom did battle with this state of function over form by constantly reconfiguring the layout of a room, believing that a smart, diagonal interaction between the 1960's hardwood futon couch with recovered blue denim cushions and the 1970's grass green prototype Lazyboy recliner would distract from the large wooden TV (with good speakers) that served as the TV stand.  Or maybe the hunter green Naugahyde-upholstered wooden chest could serve multiple functions in front of the fireplace: accentuate the rust-red carpet, store extra blankets, make another sitting surface, and block sight of the non-usable fireplace.  At the time, we just humored my mom every time she solemnly moved the brass floor lamp to the other side of the living room, but I have grown to appreciate this environment where elements stay in flux and where faith in the saving grace of good design  thrives, despite the tragic circumstances in which it must operate. 

Fast forward from the early nineties to 2007.  I was trying to finish my MFA in painting, even though I had only managed to create a very large mountain of crap in two years of grad school, and I couldn't seem to pull my thoughts together into a coherent and unified artist statement.  Up to this point, I had managed to teach art in a low-income high school for 6 years, but I had taken far more education classes as an undergrad than actual art classes.  I mean, at one point in grad school I had to teach myself how to stretch a canvas, because I had been wrapped up in the history and philosophy of education instead of  foundations in acrylics and oils in my first go round of college.  I was feeling pretty defeated, feeling like an outsider to the world of painting, feeling like I couldn't keep up or fit in with my peers. But then I realized that this was very familiar territory.  It was then that I stopped talking about making paintings in my artist statement, and started using the phrase "using the space of painting."  I knew that I was never going to be a technical aficionado with paint, and that I was never going to discover the next "ism" or movement.  Instead I was going to be a renter in the space of painting, and move in with all of my second-hand, uncoordinated furnishings.  I would fake style. I would survive by being open to new configurations, and not committing to a fixed plan.

This has played out pretty well.  And, as the last few years have taught us about finding a home, ownership is not always superior to renting space.

Please visit my work at kevinpkellyart.artspan.com

From the Middle- Part 2

So, as I have previously stated, middle children are obviously the best children.  Unlike oldest children, who always feel entitled, we middle children understand that the only way to make something happen is with real effort.  And youngest children, always generating drama and pulling the spotlight to themselves, only generate work.  And only children, Aye!  Don't even get me started about only children!  But middle children, we are the peace makers, the unifiers, the harmonizers, the volunteers...really we are like  Mother Teresa, Jimmy Carter, and barbershop quartet singers all rolled into one.  Sure, we may not be glamorous or cool, but we keep the world from falling apart!  Grad school brought all of my understanding about these things to a sharp point, as I realized how much I relied on my central  position when, say, reaching for art imagery (from daily life- nothing to risky or controversial), or selected media ("how about wood scraps, high-school-grade acrylics and hot glue- I've got plenty of that already laying around"), or composed paintings ("I know it's pretty, I tried not to make it pretty, but it always comes out pretty!").  This was not good.  Art school is about turning your self loose to make waves.  I mean, Pablo Picasso was an oldest child, maybe the ultimate oldest child, the take-charge, because-I said-so-and-I-am-in-charge kind of oldest child.  And Jackson Pollock was a youngest child, the moody, dramatic, pour-your-soul-out-for-everyone-else-to-soak-up kind of youngest child.  I knew that I had to either accept that I would never make it as an artist, because I was programed to not make waves, or find a way to make waves from the center, from the middle, positioned in between, as it were.

And there was my answer.  I was not meant to make paintings of "real" things, and I was not meant to make "abstract paintings."  I was supposed to make paintings that were a little bit of both. I was not supposed to make the beautiful ugly or the ugly beautiful.  I was meant to take disparate items and to try to make them get along, to harmonize the situation, like Jimmy Carter.

And this all leads to today, painting a picture of chewing gum and a Beatles album, trying to make them get along.

P.S.-  So, I want to apologize and just try to smooth things over with my oldest son, my youngest son, my wife, who is a youngest child, her sister, who is an oldest child, my oldest sister, my youngest sister, my mom who is a youngest child, my dad who is an only child and my in laws, both oldest children.

Please visit my work at kevinpkellyart.artspan.com

From the Middle- Part 1

Graduate school was great therapy for me.  I know that critique sessions that lasted for up to four hours were torture for some, but I found them to be very revealing, but usually indirectly.  This was the cycle: spend 15-20 hrs a week alone in a filthy, cluttered space feeling pressed for time, deprived of sleep, listening to music loudly to drown out the internal voices that criticized my every move as stupid and derivative; try to make work that was personal, but not too personal, but definitely original; settle on making the work that I "felt" I must make by doing the things that "felt natural"; hang it up and pick it a part during a four hour session with people that I was sure were much, much smarter than me (except for the one or two that I knew were much, much dumber than everybody); realize that everything that "felt natural" to me was weird and confusing to everybody else; go back to my filthy, cluttered studio and turn up the music.  But every once in a while, usually when I was busy with some mundane duty, a tiny bump in the grinding cycle would jolt me awake. It was kinda like when I was a kid sitting in the front seat of the car without a seat belt, and I was busy looking at my hands, and my mom would brake too quickly, and I would hit my face on the dashboard.  Anyway, at these moments, the most profound and the most obvious insights would come, and I would receive some clue as to what I was supposed to be doing or thinking about as I was making art. 

One such moment came as I was driving back home from a grinding critique at Wichita State.  As I drove on auto pilot from the Northeast part of town toward my house, I was reflecting on my upbringing.  I am one of eight children, number 5 from the oldest.  Now, I have always known that middle children are the most well adjusted children, eager to do their part and to keep the peace.  It was great that I was able to study art and still stay close to my family.   Then it struck me, as I drove West on the highway toward home,  I was also studying painting from the middle, in Wichita Kansas, as opposed to, say, New York or L.A.  And then a strange sinking feeling pulled at my gut, as I turned South on Main street.  Not only was I a middle child, always eager not to make waves, and not only was I planted firmly in the center of the country, I was also living in the geographic center of the city.  And then, as I drove down my street, a strange buzz grew in my head.  Counting the houses on my block, mine was the center house.

Here was something to pay attention to.

Please visit my work at: kevinpkellyart.artspan.com