Resident Artist:
Ryan Kelly
My work comes into being through a great deal of scattershot-hearted research, tangential explorations and an unabiding love of the object, the well made, properly made, appropriate object.
Tabloid rumors, frivolous observations, dyslexic cast-offs, I take these. I collect small absurdities and narrative details of questionable importance. I celebrate. I enjoy. I creep around and wallow in them. For eight months I ran with rumors of an absurd event that brought together Vaclav Havel, Lou Reed and Madeline Albright. For two months I made nautical connections between Robinson Crusoe, John Paul Jones and Teddy Roosevelt. And recently I brought together an impossible congress of 21 famous people Walt Whitman met in his lifetime.
My impulse is to celebrate the small truth, the strange detail that refreshes a stiff textbook history. My impulse is to celebrate, to commemorate, and to feverishly, create in service of a momentary pleasure. I want to tap into that dizzying joy of holiday fervor, of the swellings of nationalistic pride and undeniable nerd ecstasy. I want things to be done up right with all the crepe paper and foil necessary.
