Visual Arts — May 15, 2013 16:59 — 1 Comment

Kelly Eckel

Life just moves.
We move with it.

Our bubbles or burdens extend as far as we will them and momentum carries us as far as our paths are meant to go.  We travel with travelers, we respirate, circulate and populate, but most often feel alone.

The Other Self, however, is an assured companion and her bags are the beast.  They are filled with the dark we avoid and the reality we can only hope to see through the color of rose.

Lately, I can say with something just a smidge away from certainty that while I walk on my path I’m discovering traces of her, as the waves of duality gain upon me with the shifting of the tides.  I’ll take the blame, for I may have dropped a crumb, or left some particle of me to indicate the direction in which I travel.  While I can’t escape that my Other Self travels with me, I have been dodging her pull with reversed polarity.

We all have the ability to regress from light to dark, from big to small, from moving to stalling, or from one solid truth to another more fluid one.  We all live in the teeter-totter world of blinded bliss and reality.  Neither is really better than the other, it’s an eyes covered or eyes uncovered choice and life makes it for us.

Kelly’s work presents us with this struggle of self through layering, duplicates and simulated shadow. Her ability to describe the internal view is both alluring and terrifying.  Her work is one of two truths.

– Visual Arts Editor, Liz McDonald

6.Goya MR
Goya

5.UntitledMR
Untitled

11.ExaptationMR2
Exaptation

3.Foot mr

Foot

1.Narcissus of ViolenceMR
Narcissus of Violence

 8.DNAMR
DNA

7.MutualistsMR
Mutualists

2.Remnants of WarMR
Remnants of War

4.ArcimboldoMR
Arcimboldo

9.Zone of Polarizing ActivityMR
Zone of Polarizing Activity

10.ZPA1MR
ZPA

for more work visit
http://kellyeckel.wordpress.com/

Bio:

Kelly Eckle
Artist Statement

Many years ago, I travelled abroad and met people that had been affected by war. When I arrived back in the United States, I started reading history and current events.  I wanted to know more to understand the patterns so that maybe I could be an educated voice against war.   The books and articles I read as well as the images I saw, were graphic and disturbing: children’s heads blown off, blood strewn across a room, inhumane words like collateral damage being used in the media. I noticed I started to lose myself in the violence. I worked on several bodies of work for ten years based on war. The image Narcissus of Violence was one of my last images within the body of work where I sand down the surface of a traditional black and white print and draw on each image. I needed to focus on a topic that was life affirming which led me to my current work about evolutionary genetics.

The work started off as a question. Why throughout human history have we made hybrid creatures in our art? I pondered the possibility that there was an instinctual memory of our evolutionary changes being expressed in the visual arts. I started cataloguing images of composite creatures depicted from cultures around the world, and I started reading about evolutionary genetics (EVO DEVO).  As I read more about EVO DEVO, the work has diverged away from the dance between art history and genetics to the relationships between species, the patterns within each of us and the relationships of life on our planet.

 

One Comment

  1. Bret says:

    I found this work to be equally beautiful and thought-provoking. It’s brilliance is simple.

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The answer isn't poetry, but rather language

- Richard Kenney