Martha Kelly Art

It’s been show season, and this weekend is the final one for me for the holidays, and always my favorite. If you’re around Memphis, please come out on Saturday or Sunday (the 14th & 15th) from 12-5 both days at 1780 Autumn in Midtown. As always, I’ll be joined by Melissa Bridgman and her gorgeous pottery. I recently hung up all my finished oils from the last year or so to look at and invite folks in to see. It’s fun to see them all together, dressed up and ready so to speak. I’m hoping to find an out of the house showing for them at some point, but Open Studio visitors will get a sneak peek.

I also have several recent prints and one set of brand new ones for this show. After my Daily Pleasures still life show this fall, I took the cherries image on the “choose joy” plate (one of Melissa’s!) and made a print. The show had been all paintings, but I really liked the image and wanted to play with it graphically as well. It’s a single plate, but I’ve been hand rolling different color combinations on it. Each one is a little bit different, and it’s been fun to play with them. Come see us if you’re able, and if you’re not, I’ve also been shipping prints off in a good quantity, and there’s plenty of time to get them before Christmas if you’d like to give some original artwork. My online store is at https://squareup.com/market/martha-kelly-art. I’m selling what’s left of the still life gouaches and oils too. I haven’t added them all individually, but if you’re interested, I’ll be happy to put up any that are in demand as needed. See the bottom photo for a sample of them. Give an eternal eclair or macarons with no calories!

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.

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.

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. 

This past weekend was the Pink Palace Crafts Fair, a longtime fair in Memphis, and I was the demonstrator for printmaking. It’s special for me to be out there. I started going to the fair with my parents as a kid, I remember getting to choose my special Christmas present just as I got old enough to fall in love with the silver handmade jewelry, and now I get to be a part of it. I don’t generally do outdoor fairs, and I don’t own a 10x10 tent, nor do I want to, but this fair puts me safely inside an enormous tent (which was key this past weekend) and lets me sit out and see all my friends and neighbors passing through the show.

It’s fun to sit and carve in my lap and let people see the laborious process (though deeply satisfying) that goes into each carved print. I like talking to the kids who love art, the teens who have done a block or two in school art class, and adults of all stripes who make art or appreciate it. I even get a little work done! This past weekend I worked on five different blocks. I had one large one going already and did a bit more on it, though you hit a point where damage can happen to something intricate if you’re in and out of concentration all day. I started a new large block for most of Saturday, but again, I felt like I needed more concentration to finish that one out. So later in the weekend I jumped to a smaller block based on a recent gouache painting of cherries. That gouache and all its friends are still up in my still life show Daily Pleasures at Playhouse on the Square in Memphis through November 3rd. I’d been thinking for a while of trying this one in a print as well, and I grabbed a scrap piece of Lino and drew it out Sunday morning to give me something new to work on. Above are yesterday’s color tests. I’m hand rolling several colors at once and printing it all in one go, a simpler form of color work than carving an individual block for each separate color.

One last tiny block I did was a snail, based on a sketch I did out west this summer. I had my sketchbook out with me, as I always do, and happened across that sketch. I always need new note card designs, so I’ll get this one printed for the later fall shows.

Here is one of the larger blocks I was also working on. The other hasn’t progressed far enough to really show yet. I’ve only got a small percentage done, even though it took a while to get there. Both are continuing my series about water that is mostly oils, but I’m working on getting some prints to go with the larger paintings. This one still needs a bit of work in the water, where light meets dark, but it’s mostly done now.

I've had a number of requests to do a calendar again for 2020 after taking 2019 off. I was busy last year, but also the last calendar I did had a bunch fewer orders than previously. There were a lot of local artists doing calendars last year, and I wasn't sure if folks were tired of mine. This year I decided to assemble the art and take online orders. If I get enough orders to make it worth the printing costs and amount of time it takes, I'll go ahead and get it printed. If I don't get enough orders, I'll cancel all orders (well ahead of any credit cards being charged). So here's your chance if you want a calendar for 2020. Go ahead and put your order in now on my website, and if I get enough, it will happen. I'll say again that NO CHARGES WILL GO THROUGH AT ALL unless I actually get the calendar in hand and have it ready to distribute. You can "vote" and place your order at my online store.

www.squareup.com/market/martha-kelly-art

Calendars are $18 again this year, and choose from the website for pick up (if you're local and willing to pick up from me in Midtown) or shipping for 1, 2, or 3.

The group of images for this year is brand new -- no repeats from previous years (as always).

I was a guest on Memphis on the Mark this week, which was great fun. I've known Mark Jones my whole life, since we both grew up at Idlewild Presbyterian here in Memphis. He's a film  maker with a number of movies (including Tennessee Queer, a small town family drama, which uses my house as one of its main sets) and several web series to his credit. His newest venture is an interview show with film makers, artists, and other creatives. I was thrilled to be on. We talked a lot about my printing presses and how they work, for those who are interested in that. And I found out that I talk with animation and apparently need to ask for a clip-on mike instead of a stick-on one. The stick-on one fell down my blouse quite early in the process and can be heard rustling throughout the interview. I'm not ready for prime time yet...

I was away for the weekend but came home, locked in, and spent the morning printing a color version of this print. It takes more concentration to print color than black and white, since I have two small rollers and have to hand mix the colors on the block each time. They’re all in the same general pattern, but there is necessarily a little variation with each one.

This is a varied edition, which is labeled “ed var 1/40” at the bottom of each print. That means that there are 40 total prints from this block, but they don’t all look alike. I ran out of paper at 13 colored ones (I’d meant to do 15), so the rest will be black and white. It’s not worth setting back up another day for just two more. I usually pick one good look and go with it for the final print, but I liked both versions of this one, and sometimes it’s nice to have some variety to offer people. Just for fun.