Martha Kelly Art

I’m having a letterpress weekend this long holiday weekend, working on getting cards ready for the coming holiday sales. I’m quite happy with this one, so I’ve been printing it in black (letting the ink fade as I go) and silver (below). I’m still struggling to get the bird how I want it, so I’ve mostly held off on it so far. When I get to the red, I’ll do it and the trees both. It’s possible that I just don’t like how the bird printed in the silver, which is always runnier than my other inks. The color tests came out well, though I can’t quite decide how much “noise” to leave in the background behind the bird. At the bottom is a quickie video of my view when I’m running the press.

I’m back in the Pacific Northwest for a short couple of weeks. I had been super busy at home and hadn’t had time to sketch lately, so it’s been lovely to jump back into a little hiking and cycling with a side of sketching.

My partner was digging around on YouTube and found this video of me talking about My Own Places, the landscape exhibition I had at Dixon Gallery and Gardens in 2015. They invited me as a current landscape artist to do a solo show as a complement to their Southern Impressionism exhibit. It was the highlight of my career so far, and it was fun to revisit talking about the way I paint and carve prints and how those two media differ from each other. And how keeping a sketchbook has radically broadened the work that I do.

We had one nice weather day left yesterday. Really half a one. I took my show down this week, and I’ve been doing a ton of paperwork and the business side of working for myself, so I decided to go rogue with my bicycle yesterday. I have a milk crate on the back of it that will carry a nice amount of art gear, so I packed my sketching things, a lunch, and my current book and cycled out the Greenline to Shelby Farms park. I sat on a bench in the sun by my favorite small lake, which I had to myself except for a flock of ducks on it and a herd of buffalo behind me. I saw two great herons, ate my lunch and read, did this sketch, ran through the visitors’ center with a great gift shop (as well as other necessities) and cycled home. It was sprinkling most of the ride, but not badly enough to be unpleasant. The round trip was 25 miles, and it’s the first time I’ve done it on my own, which felt great. I really enjoy that protected bike path, almost completely out of traffic. It was a perfect day before I get on the run again. I’m grateful to be able to take a flexible day with the weather and just go when it’s nice and work other times to make up for it.

I pretty much spent the day on Broad Avenue on Saturday. It’s one of Memphis’s newer art districts, and they were having an art walk/festival. The Memphis Urban Sketchers met up at 10 at City and State, the coffee shop at the far end, and beautifully, my visiting sister went with me. One of her college friends is one of my sketching friends, and we had a ball. It was coldish to start, so we hung out at City and State a good bit. Above is a sketch I had done there a couple of weeks ago but not posted. Below are the people studies I did while we were all hanging out talking.

I was working in gray fountain pen and watercolor. I enthusiastically put down a bunch of wet paint in my regular art journal (5x5”), so I switched over to the 8” square one after and did a larger more connected spread. Elizabeth was wearing stripes, which are always such fun to draw. Vicki and Nancy were sitting with her, and I caught Nancy with a brush in her mouth as she worked.

All of this was accompanied by chai. Very civilized sketching. Afterwards a group of us walked all up and down the street, checking out the shops and art shows. The last three bought fantastic bowls of paella and sat out in the sunshine eating and visiting. It was an excellent day.

This project had an enormous personal impact on me when the Presbyterian Church U.S.A, inspired by the beauty and artwork of the St. John’s Bible, decided to commission artwork to illustrate the denomination’s new Book of Common Worship. I was lucky enough to be the artist to receive that commission, and it has been easily the most important project of my career.

The St. John’s Bible pages are huge. Far larger than I had pictured. They had a number of the painted pages, and (fascinating for me) they also had the collage mock ups that the artists did before beginning in on that actual vellum. The exhibition also included some Medieval French illuminated psalters.

​Standing in that room with that long line of Biblical artwork made me feel enormously privileged to be a part of that line of artists through centuries who have interpreted and illustrated the Bible. The book I illustrated will never get the museum attention that the enormous St. John’s project has, but it is in use nationally and beyond for the next 25 or 30 years. I am deeply grateful to have been a part of it.

No photographs were allowed in the exhibition, which I was sad about. I would love to share the collages alongside the finished pages. It was a fascinating journey. But my partner kindly surprised me at the end with the Book of Psalms from the gift shop. I’m thrilled to have a small piece of it to bring home and to remember standing in that space that spanned time, belonging to a long line of artists who contributed to this ongoing work of retelling and interpreting the word. The Book of Common Worship was limited in colors, which suited my printmaking focus, so it has a very different feel. But here are a few photos of my illustrations alongside the St. John's Bible. 

Only so many photos will load easily at once, so I saved some of my favorites from the Joslyn for a second post. I’ve looked at Gustave Dore’s engravings for years, but I had only seen one or two oil paintings by him. This landscape blew me away. I took a couple of closer up shots as well as the overall. I’m a sucker for a twilight/stars scene, and the teal stripe of water beguiled me, as did the texture in the sky. If I could have taken one piece home to live with daily, this would have been it, even though there were likely some objectively “finer” pieces there. I adore it.

I also fell for this urban landscape by John Sloan, one of the founders of the Ashcan school. I’m late learning about them, but every piece I see, I like it more. They painted urban landscapes in the early 20th century, and I’m definitely a city girl. I kept coming back to look at this one as well.

Finally this El Greco blew me away. He was a painter so ahead of his time. Like Van Gogh and Walter Anderson and Georgia O’Keefe, he saw the world around him in a distinctive, visionary style, and his paintings could be no one else’s. There are only a handful of painters who have completely created a new visual vocabulary. Most great painters, even the masters, build strongly on those coming before. A handful manage to not start from scratch but get somewhere so unique that it feels as if they did. El Greco is one of those. You would think his paintings are 20th century, and he was 400 years ahead of that. This one is about 1582. It’s more muted than some of his, since the subject is the understated and ascetic St. Francis, but it contains that blaze of sky in the background, and the brushwork is loose and assured and only what he needs with not a jot more added. One of the true greats.

I visited family over the weekend and also did something of a Midwest art museum tour. Back in college I had taken one summer sculpture class in Omaha and visited the Joslyn, but my memory of it was hazy at best. It was a total delight. A gorgeous variegated pink stone building housing a beautifully curated collection. We had just that morning seen a piece on Helen Frankenthaler on one of the Sunday morning shows. My art knowledge of mid 20th century and beyond, especially in abstract work, is pretty sketchy. I had seen her being mentioned various places and seen a piece or two, but beyond that knew nothing. This monumental piece gobsmacked me in person. It’s the only one I managed to do a sketch of, but I was so glad to have that time to sit with it. Later one of my honorary nieces, which is how I think of several different daughters of people dear to me, wanted to do a collage project. I had told her that I’m always drawn to collage, but I don’t feel I do it well. So we sat down together with my journal page from the museum and each constructed at least an homage to the Frankenthaler piece we had seen together. It was great fun to do, if nothing else.

Here are a couple of other pieces I loved at the Joslyn. I’ve always been a total sucker for Dutch still life paintings, and they had a lovely breakfast piece — well on the fancy end of that category. Pieter Claesz’s super simple ones are my very favorites, but I really enjoyed this one from 1630 by Jacob Fopsen van Es. I was also struck by a Madonna with Botticelli/Fra Lippo Lippi resonances by Lorenzo di Credi, c. 1490. The detail is exquisite. I’m going to flood this blog post with too many photos, so I’ll put up another couple of favorites in a post to follow. Too good not to share.