Brian Kelly’s sculptures shine a light on art
A happy union of whimsy and baroque — that describes Brian Kelly’s complex sculptures.
And he constructs them from reclaimed materials. In fact, he’s very conscious of working in an environment-friendly way.
“One of the reasons I use reclaimed material is that I avoid when possible using new products,” he says. “A self-imposed dystopia. You don’t have to look far to see what our culture discards or see the functionality in those objects.”
About 20 creations by Kelly, a longtime Hamilton artist who is leaving town, are on show in “Goodbye, Goodbye, Hamiltones,” at You Me Gallery.
Kelly takes a spontaneous and playful approach when starting a piece. He once found two discarded lamp housings. He stepped on them — deliberately.
“I was after the skewed fortune cookie motif,” he explains.
Another time he discovered five metal tubes. “What now?” he asked himself.
Each sculpture in the exhibition sports a functioning light bulb. It shines a light on its surroundings, a most appropriate metaphor for a work of art.
“I’m a product of a long line of makers,” Kelly says. “My father and grandfather grew up in an era where you made or fixed things. And my friend Ian Gray used to make elegant lamps out of found objects. My lamps started there, though I took a more decorative direction.”
“A bagel rolls …” a tall, lean structure, offers emphatic geometric shapes. It springs from a circular base whose shape is echoed in the smaller metal rings on wires that surround the core. These rings hang from a big ring that attaches itself to a frame of straight lines.
Two taut springs add diagonal lines and attach the big ring to the frame. The frame encloses a metal funnel housing a light bulb. A large glass lampshade encloses the bulb.
Kelly does not hide the bits and pieces holding the work together. And he avoids welding.
“It’s an intrusive technology,” he says. “Most of my connections are made with tied wire, a technique I adopted after watching workers making reinforcing for concrete.
“I also use rivets and bolts, simple material that relates to the nature of the work and has a subtle esthetic. I think, by their nature, they look sculptural.”
In “Foot Bridge,” a smaller structure, a unit reminiscent of a space capsule floats on long, thin legs rising from a circle-insquare base. Light shines through the portholes of the capsule. A fake plant lies on top and bends downward, leading us visually back to the base.
“Iron oxide sea can …” belongs to a sculpture leaning tipsily on three mangled tubular legs. A rusty inverted lamp climbs out of a crushed wire basket. A lump of crystal beads hangs on the outside, the kind that might have decorated a chandelier. They are complemented by a cluster of red-headed clips.
Kelly’s sculptures require a stash or, what he calls, an archive.
“The archive expands and contracts in relation to what I make,” he says. “I collect material for a number of reasons. Its configuration: can I mount a light in it? Its malleability: can I bend it or drill a hole in it? Its functionality: can I run a wire through it? Its patina: is its surface interesting? ”
But how does Kelly know when to stop?
“My father told me, ‘It’s not what you put into a drawing that makes it work, it’s what you leave out.’ I’ve been trying to follow his advice all my life with varying degrees of success.”