Photos by Jacob Koestler
Portrait of artist.
Kelley O’Brien, “Is Not the (Red) Mountain Green”, 2017, pine boxes, Rhynie Chert, red soil of the Am Monadh Ruadh, moss of the Caledonian Forest. Courtesy of artist.
Kelley O’Brien, “The Growth of the Mountain,” 2015, stills from video. Courtesy of the artist.
Kelley O’Brien, “The Secluded Wood”, 2017, Ancient Scots Pine. Courtesy of artist.
Kelley, O’Brien, “American at Work”,2017, split screen video installation still, time 5:00 min. Description: Each of the 8,300 federal buildings in the United States displays two portraits in its lobby: one of the president and one of the vice president. Angel, a naturalized American citizen from Mexico City, is a General Services Administration employee at the Anthony J. Celebrezze Federal Building in Cleveland. He is tasked with the removal of the outgoing president and vice president that brought him hope and pride, and installing White House-sanctioned portraits of the incoming president and vice president who are determined to wall off his homeland. Courtesy of artist.
a Window to Sculpture Emerging Artist Series 2019 Exhibition
Kelley O’Brien: We too, traverse the earth
Main Gallery
January 25 – March 15, 2019
Kelley O’Brien: We too, traverse the earth
Main Gallery
January 25 – March 15, 2019
Dual opening receptions, Friday, January 25 at 5:30 – 8:00 p.m. with Ryan Dewey
The Artist Talks: Ryan Dewey, 6:15 p.m. in the Euclid Avenue Gallery
The Artist Talks: Kelley O’Brien, 7:00 p.m. in the Main Gallery
Kelley O’Brien’s We too, traverse the earth frames the social and historical landscape of Cleveland from a feminist critical perspective. O’Brien explores how a woman’s act of walking is a form of resistance. Her investigation of the topic begins with “Lucy,” once the oldest known evidence of bipedalism, discovered by a Cleveland paleoanthropologist. From this seminal moment in human development, the exhibition traces the political and social history of women walking in Cleveland: as protest, as an expression of freedom, and as an act of reclamation. Her work takes note of the location of The Sculpture Center, bordering between University Circle and East Cleveland, and seeks to contextualize the current experience of walking as it relates to these geographically-close, but socially-distant areas of the city.
Short Bio
Kelley O’Brien is an interdisciplinary artist working between the American Midwest and Ireland. With her background in Architecture (University of Tennessee ’11) and Design (Cranbrook Academy of Art ’14) Kelley’s work negotiates boundaries defined between humans and the natural world. She has exhibited at the University of the Philippines, National College of Art and Design in Dublin as well as SPACES, Roy G Biv, and Woman Made Gallery in the United States. Kelley has been awarded grants from the Ohio Arts Council and a Fulbright Scholarship to the Philippines. Additionally, she has expanded she skills through residencies at Green Papaya Art Space in the Philippines, the Irish Museum of Art in Dublin, and the Scottish Sculpture Workshop in Lumsden. Her artistic practice extends into her academic and curatorial research through collaborative projects with Francis Halsall under the title “Mapping Systems.” Collectively they have held workshops, lecture courses, and curated residencies in Ireland and the Philippines.
Kelley O’Brien and Anthony Warnick (a W2S 2018 artist) are Co-Director/Co-Curator of The Muted Horn, a non-institutional project space on the near west side of Cleveland that shows one-person exhibitions by regional and national artists to promote experimental modes of practice.
Visit Kelley O’Brien’s website
