Lee Kelly ~ Sculptor, Musician and Poet

Take a tour around the internet and you will find a few videos of Lee Kelly other than the one from Oregon Public Broadcasting one that I posted the other day. The first one I've linked here shows a group of men making music on one of Lee Kelly's sculptures. At the end of it, you'll see Lee Kelly climbing the sculpture and sitting on its summit. The second video includes many scenes from his sculpture garden in Oregon City as well as him reading a few of his pieces of poetry. The ending shows him scaling the same sculpture as in the first.



Continuing that tour of the internet and you'll be able to read two of his pieces of poetry, here and here.

And for your viewing pleasure here is the venerable Kelly Fountain at SW 6th and Pine here in Portland. There's nothing like the sound of flowing water, especially on city streets.

Sculptural Genius

John asked me this morning what I would choose if I could be any kind of gifted artist, I said maybe a sculptor. This is the video that started the whole conversation, if you have ten minutes to be inspired check it out.

Lee Kelly ~ Arlie, in the Middle

Arlie our featured piece of the week here at Fifty Two Pieces was created in 1978, seventeen years after the 1961 piece introduced later in the week. Comparing those two pieces at the Portland Art Museum will be a great deal easier during the next few months. Arlie sits in the sculpture garden and the 1961 piece is just inside welcoming visitors to the PNCA at 100 show.

The 1961 piece is wildly organic, growing up from smaller sinewy parts. Looking at its flat two-dimensional representation, you can almost see an abstracted Ganesha. The paint Kelly applied to the metal enhances this organic imagery. In person, the piece seems to be breathing. Listen carefully and you can hear it inhaling and exhaling, perhaps a huge sigh to no longer be up on the fourth floor of the Hoffman Wing.




Stylistically, Kelly removed the added color and relied on the variations in the rust of the Corten steel when he created Arlie in 1978. Many think of this work as being influenced by abstract expressionism, think Anthony Caro, and minimalism, perhaps David Smith. For many visiting the sculpture garden, the very tall, over 12 feet, sculpture has an animalistic look. Even without knowing that the name of the sculpture is Arlie, people almost always think animal. Perhaps it's the eye to one side of that large planar form. Face, head and okay, there are those three legs attached. The rust of the Corten steel enhances the animal effect, giving the appearance of a smooth coat of red fur. For an interesting take on Arlie, visit PDL// Portland Art Museum Unauthorized Audio Tour. The link is to Arlie's segment and is something less than a three minute audio. It's great fun from Vital 5 Productions located in that city to the North, Seattle.


Thirty years later, Lee Kelly's work is now mostly in welded stainless steel. Those of us who visit the International Rose Test Garden here in Portland can see one of his early welded stainless creations, Water Sculpture. Created about the same time as Arlie, the stainless reflects the environment around it, picking up the colors and atmosphere of the people viewing it as well as in this case the trees and flowers of the rose garden. Here is another more recent stainless creation, Icarus Revisited, 2005.






Shown at the Elizabeth Leach Gallery, their website provides this description.

Icarus Revisited, Kelly’s new body of work, is an investigation of how our culture’s ancient myths have been recast through time, traveling from their place of origin to the new world. In the myth of Icarus, King Menos forbade Icarus, the Son of Daedalus of Crete to fly. He made two wings out of wax, but when he flew too close to the sun, the wax wings melted and he fell into the sea. Lee Kelly supplies a different ending where Icarus flew on to Kittyhawk and invented aeronautics.

This work is an account of attempted flight and the dangers of arrogance. It is a reminder that art is a residue of attempted flight and the result of great imaginings, and how artistic ideas flourish without the restrictions of time and boundaries.

When I am Wise

Mary, my other mother, loves Lee Kelly. She pointed Arlie out to me the first time I saw it, she told me about her aunt Caroline who lived in a house designed inside by Kelly, an undulating Gaudi style house on Greenleaf. She told me Lee Kelly was an extraordinary person, and coming from her I knew it was true. She is extraordinary herself. So today I am going to post a poem by Mary Gray, published in Wild Song in 1998.

When I am Wise

When I am wise in the speech of grass,
I forget the sound of words
and walk into the bottomland
and lie my head on the ground
and listen to what grass tells me
about small places for wind to sing,
about the labor of insects,
about shadows dank with spice,
and the friendliness of weeds.

When I am wise in the dance of grass,
I forget my name and run
into the rippling bottomland
and lean against the silence which flows
out of the crumpled mountains
and rises through slick blades, pods,
wheat stems, and curly shoots,
and is carried by wind for miles
from my outstretched hands.

Lee Kelly ~ The Hands that Made "Arlie"

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Here are the hands of the man who made Arlie, our featured sculpture of the week. Lee Kelly was born in 1932 and has made art longer than probably most of the people who read this blog post have been alive. He has done so many things in those seventy-seven years. Think about that, seventy-seven years alive on this planet, living in the Pacific Northwest. Born in Idaho he spent part of his childhood here in Portland, served in the Korean War and returned to the Portland area. He has travelled widely, across many continents and his artistic works reflect those experiences as well as the totality of the life he has led.

He is an inspiration for the artists and public here in Portland providing much needed support for the artistic community when he could easily not be involved. There are a few videos of Lee Kelly available to watch on the internet. This one from OPB will really give you an insight into the man and his art. Those of us who have experienced his works are fortunate and those who are part of his inner circle are the ones who are truly blessed.

Lee Kelly has a studio in an old barn on property outside of Salem. That's where he has creates his art by welding and grinding. It would be a real treat to visit there. Not all of us can do that. So Oregon Public Broadcasting did a video interview of him there in Salem. The video linked here cannot be embedded as youtube and vimeo productions can be. So for a look at Lee Kelly, his life and his art, click this link ... Lee Kelly on OPB.

Untitled 1961

PNCA at 100 features only one Kelly sculpture, this painted steel piece of 1961. Compare it to this 1959 painting last shown in the Elizabeth Leach Gallery in August of 2008. D.K. Row did a fine job of describing Kelly in this Visual Arts Oregonian review.

How can anything so massive and hard be delicate? There is a place, almost like the inside of a rock at the beach or an armpit down low on this piece where there are tiny little pokey fungi like pieces that stick out. Like warts, like bi-valves. How these funny little things add life to something is what most impresses me.

Lee Kelly ~ There Stands "Arlie"

Introducing Arlie. Arlie who, you might ask. Who is this Arlie? Well, Arlie is the creation of Lee Kelly, Portland's hometown and world renowned sculptor. Over the years, Arlie has been thought of as a representative of abstract expressionism. Others have put animal characteristics into him and called him a puppy or even a creature from Star Wars. Whatever it takes to pull the viewer into a piece of art. In this case, Kelly welded three large posts of Corten steel to a central oblong form, almost whimsical in nature. During the week we'll be looking at Arlie more, as well as Lee Kelly and some of his other works.

For those of you who are in the Portland area, Arlie stands in the sculpture garden at the Portland Art Museum. You can see it and other Lee Kelly works that will be in the upcoming show, PNCA at 100 that opens this weekend, June 6-7, 2009. From the Museum's website

PNCA at 100 will celebrate the centennial of the Museum Art School, now Pacific Northwest College of Art. From its opening in 1909 as Oregon’s first professional art school, PNCA has trained the region’s finest artists, served as a laboratory for new ideas, and fostered the Portland art scene. More than a dozen faculty and alumni will be represented in the exhibition, which will be accompanied by an illustrated publication.