The Garden at Leland
Iron Works in Oregon City is open to visitors.
For details, call Elizabeth Leach Gallery, 207 SW Pine
St., 224-0521.
Unlike athletes, artists improve with age. But in our constant
quest for the new and eccentric, we often let fall by the
wayside artists who have continued on a deepening quest of
their medium. I recently spoke to Lee Kelly, a sculptor known
for his steel work, about the unveiling of his new piece,
Memory '99. Though we may have turned away from steel
sculpture because of the many admittedly bad examples, it's
time to look again at those which stand above the rest.
Memory '99, at Kelly's sculpture park in Oregon
City, and a concurrent show at Elizabeth Leach Gallery allow
us to think again about an artist who is still producing
good work. Often it is those very things we take for granted
or overlook that are most fresh. And memory, piqued, honors
the present.
On the turnoff to Kelly's studio, past the bald, flaxen
farm lands, the topography begins to change. Amid the thin
pines that flank the fence, steel and aluminum flash from
open park land. Visitors are greeted by three large forms
standing quietly, their patina of rust new as molt on a
bird. These three pieces make up Memory '99.
When Kelly greets me, he is open and friendly. "The idea
of these Memory pieces" Kelly says, "seems to develop
every 10 years or so." He started thinking about the series
in 1969 but didn't complete that decade's piece until 1979,
when he did two works, Memory of '69 and Memory
'79. His new work continues the tradition, skipping
1989. Kelly says they arise from "the shambles" of what
he's been up to.
One of Portland's major artists, Kelly is a contemporary
of Manuel Izquierdo and Mel Katz. He helped foster the city's
art scene in the '60s and '70s. He began as an abstract
painter but soon turned to metal sculpture, often painting
it with bright, gestural brushstrokes. The type of work
he makes belongs to a past not much revered these days.
Steel sculpture has gone the way of innocuous corporate
decoration. You see it now and again in public parks, plopped
there by some now-defunct committee. "Clearly, I'm old hat,"
muses Kelly. "I don't spend a lot of time thinking about
whether I fit in. I'd like to stay around long enough to
see how this all pans out. I am curious to see if we'll
come back to appreciate some sort of object that's more
or less permanent."
Kelly looks to the Asian continent for artistic sustenance,
but he is wholly at home in the terrain and culture of the
Northwest. Look at his work closely and you'll see the meeting
of these influences in its concrete physicality. Made of
steel cannibalized from previous sculpture, the work has
a cantilevered, flowing quality. In spite of their mass,
forms flow from the main stems and swirl up; some rock as
if on water. Indeed, when it is suggested that the swirls
on two of the pieces refer to his background as a painter,
he replies, "Yes, but it's also an ancient water sign."
Kelly has struck a balance here between hulking mass and
airy movement that is at once fugitive and permanent.
In the best works, the rigid steel has a fluid rhythm;
time intercedes with concrete elements. A grove of pines
that he and his late wife, Bonnie, planted 30 years ago
grows nearby. One sculpture is shaded and crowded by a competing,
volunteer pine. Near that is a grouping of sculptures dedicated
to Bonnie. Both Kelly's daughter and son-in-law live on
the property, adding a generational layer. While looking
at the memorial, Kelly points out a cobweb running across
the two furthest sculptures of the group. In the autumn
light, the filament glints as a breeze catches the ephemeral
thread framed by steel.
"If you think of the object as a box that holds the idea,
then in a sense, the two things can be separate," Kelly
says. "Now, how elegant does the box need to be to hold
this idea?"
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Willamette Week | originally
published August 11,
1999
|
