ARTIST STATEMENT
“I love the living cycle of cloth as found in our everyday experience. From birth to death, we feel its closeness and its’ intimate connection to our body. The tactile nature of materials and its’ metaphoric qualities is why I choose to work with it.” The sources for my work reflect what I am seeking to understand, trying to reconcile, protect or remember. I choose materials and techniques to layer meanings. Like layers of thought, I build up the surface of my textile works with drawing, stitching, painting and discharge to invite the cloth to take form and record my artistic process as the earth records the passage of time. My latest artworks are discourses on the relationships between humans and their shared natural environment during the Anthropocene. Sharing my grief about entrenched violence, colonialism, capitalism and the continued deliberate destruction of natural ecosystems that support human life.
BIOGRAPHY
Kelly makes her home in St. John’s Newfoundland, Canada. Living on an island in the North Atlantic Ocean rich with natural spaces for inspiration and artistic challenge.
St. John’s is home to one of the highest concentration of artists in any Canadian country postal code – A1C. Living in this cultural community has resulted in the blending of disciplines within an individual practice. Kelly’s interdisciplinary practice ranges from Set Production Design
for Film and Television, Costume Design to exhibiting her Fibre Art internationally.
Kelly studied at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax, Nova Scotia where she graduated with degrees in Fine Art and Art Education. Her Art and life are enriched by incredible encounters with nature and culture she has experienced over her lifetime. She has trekked into mountain ranges Rockies (Canada), Simien (Ethiopia), Himalayas, (India and Nepal), has reached the summit of Mt. Kilimanjaro, traveled by mokoro into the Okavango Delta (Botswana), Lake Malawi and Lake Tana (Ethiopia).
Kelly’s art and life reflect her activism for the environment and social change in her local community and abroad. Her volunteerism made a significant contribution to Oxfam Canada’s public engagement and governance. In 2001 she began her service on the Board of Directors Kelly’s leadership led her to serve as National Board Chairperson and International Board Trustee from 2007-2010. This voluntary work in International Development is inspired by her own experience living and teaching in Botswana in southern Africa in the mid 1990s. Where she met her life partner, a Newfoundlander.
