Frontier

5 -19 March 2015

77-A Fort St

Victoria BC

Polychrome Fine Arts

Interview with PJ Kelly by Efren Quiroz [Exhibit-v]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OcUap-1BZ4s

Review by Debora Alanna

with conversation excerpts between Pj Kelly & Debora Alanna

Full conversation & interview located after the review.

Pj Kelly: Focus? It is poetry. That is how I have been thinking of this.

Rhythmic and systematic structuring emphasises consciousness through intonations of layer placement, colour choices and somewhat edgy, jaunty juxtapositions. Frontier is a collection of terse verses, quick-witted visual poems. Frontier is, by definition and presentation, beyond the commonplace. Kelly describes states of being.

Pj Kelly: ‘If You Know What's Good For You’

Acrylic & medium on board. 3 x 5 x 1.5”

~ photo courtesy June Higgins

Pj Kelly: ‘Just One Thing After Another’.

Acrylic & medium on board. 3 x 5 x 1.5”

~ photo courtesy June Higgins

Pj Kelly: The dot is so unthreatening as a little, small unit of mark.

Debora Alanna: There are so many dots.

Pj Kelly: I have a lot to say.

Kelly stacks serious layers of dots, spotted overlays, deposits of thought that contrast and meld. Whirling with thought, sheets of clear or opaque or multiple layers and cropped sheets of medium or acrylic paint stratum elevate layers of her diminutive and larger works.

Her surface creations begin flat as poured acrylic paint and media born textures. Rolled and cut swirls, layers of thick and progressively thicker paint puddles and swatches are interspersed with acrylic medium layers, painted paint - the painted medium.

Pj Kelly: ‘What a Day That Was

Acrylic on panel. 10 x 10”

~ photo courtesy June Higgins

Pj Kelly: ‘Same Place’

Acrylic on panel. 10 x 10”

~ Photo courtesy June Higgins

Pj Kelly: 'Starring In'. Acrylic on panel.

Acrylic & medium on board.

~ photo by Debora Alanna

New frontiers of shrewd discussion assert themselves. High relief works are cradled by spotted bas relief spots of single hue acrylic dots, continuity reminiscent of any spot/dot surface works like Yayoi Kusama’s profusion or Damien Hirst’s surface complicity. There is a Pop sensibility, reminiscent of the Roy Lichtenstein dots in the continuous surface dotting without deference to his mediated origins.

Pj Kelly: ‘Beach Life’

Acrylic & medium on board. 3 x 5 x 1.5”

~ photo by Debora Alanna

Kelly sojourns in the elusive work practice that marries painting with sculpture, a frontier territory. With her abetting dots, the means to a continuity of work process, Kelly investigates the sculpture fringe. Determinedly, three dimensional work transitions to sensible visibility from cut out shapes and multifaceted layering. Composites of modular values form traits that become entities – what Kelly calls sculpture. She allows a clever culmination of thought as her materials insinuate surface expansion. Although some works are described as paintings, many works interchange designation. Kelly’s innovative devices incorporate painting and sculpture, thwarting allegiance to definition or category. Kelly’s frontiers stretch the boundaries of both disciplines while being dedicated to her distinctive personal explorations.

Debora Alanna: Your work seems to be just beyond the edge of reason. Do you agree?

Pj Kelly: yes, this seems reasonable.

Frontier leans forward into the void where reasoning seems futile. Wooden painting cradles frame and structure Kelly’s three dimensional work neatly as familial constitution. With conviction, Kelly advances declarations of existence beyond the rational consciousness where veracity is substantial. Works are intelligently argumentative. Contrasting hard edges of pure colour zips with shrewd round centres of explicative marks, vortices of wit that reveal a subterfuge that is within human minds. Frontier takes us into the in-between world where rational thought coaxes, plays and ploys with the human capacity to hope, believe and ultimately, act.

Pj Kelly: ‘Full Frontal’ 1

Acrylic & medium on board. 3 x 5 x 1.5”

~ photo courtesy June Higgins

Debora Alanna: I see undeveloped leaning towers of research into texture, colour. Embryonic potential for some dimension beyond perception, tidy comprehension. Or, how would you describe you work in relation to this observation?

Pj Kelly: yes, beyond tidy comprehension is awesome. I wonder what are these things. I love to make things. It is totally research, I am completely process oriented. The more I work, the more I want to work, the more avenues open. I think there are two schools of art making. Some people have a vision and set out to complete it. They know from the start what they want out of the work. I don't work like that at all. I used to think this was a handicap, but it's just the way it is. The things I can create are far more interesting than anything I could think up. My brain just gets in the way for most things.

Pj Kelly: ‘Filter’

Acrylic & medium on board.
3 x 5 x 1.5”

~ photo courtesy June Higgins

Pj Kelly: ‘Box Life’

Acrylic & medium on board.
3 x 5 x 1.5”

~ photo courtesy June Higgins

Pj Kelly: ‘She's Not There’

Acrylic & medium on board.
3 x 5 x 1.5”

~ photo courtesy June Higgins

Frontier is remarkably strong in its wayward layered stratum. We see no platitudes of inanity. Dotted cradles or surface treatments hearken to lapsed, irreconcilable feelings. Kelly constructs blatant prods to allow a deeper visual connection with her audience. Because of their gem sizes and sumptuousness, we arrive at frontiers of mammon with stylishly, bawdy innuendos. So rich in their purity of colour to be impish, Kelly’s work pushes us out the door of comfortable doted ritual into the space between mischievous camaraderie where alliance is weighted. Entrusted with inequitable patterns demanding cohesion and acceptance of states of discriminatory acquiescence, Kelly bluntly distinguishes worlds of probing as her multipart, convoluted nuancing between what we intuit and what fact can empirically dispose of, simplifying the visual aspects of human existence.

Debora Alanna: Your work seem to be stacks of time frames, collections of strength gone awry yet holding onto integrity. Would you agree that time is a factor, and if it is, how so?

Pj Kelly: time is definitely a factor. The layers of dots the layers of paint the layers of time changing the way we perceive everything. Most things look different through the filter of time, and the layers of elements are there obscuring what is going on in the first place. Time, time time. Over time I see where the weaknesses are and try to make the things stronger. Integrity is important.

Pj Kelly: 'Full Frontal’ 3

Acrylic & medium on board. 3 x 5 x 1.5”

~ photo courtesy June Higgins

Pj Kelly: ‘Full Frontal’ 4

Acrylic & medium on board. 3 x 5 x 1.5”

~ photo courtesy June Higgins

We are marshalled into the indefinite realms of emotional turbulence. What we know best is self contained, begun with the boxes and dots. Anxious journeys are rings of days or divided, overlapping lengths of time that become time stacked for time tempered burial. Shapes, textured bits, peek out in fun filled remembrance. Work reflects upon time spent and enjoyed. Her voltaic piles results in blatant electricity. How people coexist produces work of shivers, of light as angst trapped currents. Kelly wedges together complex and difficult existence. Her documents contest, emit epiphanies brilliantly to construe discomfited frontiers of self-conscious integrity.

Pj Kelly: Frontier – installation

‘The Greek word Symbolon means the halves of a broken piece of pottery. One part of the physical object rests in the physical world, the other part in the invisible. Symbolic moments are those events when we are conscious that life has taken on powerful metaphoric vibrations. Life feels heightened. We sense that we are being struck open, in our hearts, or drawn upwards, away from the cracked world. Every meeting of the vertical and horizontal planes is a layering of realms, in the ritual crux. These are the experiences that seem to move us beyond matter, into a spiritual realm.’

~ Mystic Trudeau: The Fire and the Rose, B.W. Powe, Thomas Allen Publishers, Toronto, Ontario, 2007. pg. 162-3

Kelly has a knack for making palpable physicality with invisible impossibilities. Her use of pure colour holds the work together in its limpid reflection and transmission of divergent authenticity. Cut and repurposed bits of acrylic layers are additive events. Stacks reverberate as consciousness. Layers uphold and withhold, teasing and taunting, allowing enough detail, enough spillage of intent to inveigle, convince the viewer that breakage can be formidable and bits can resurrect into a stance of heartened determination, even if we tend to keel over in the process. Kelly’s cumulative piles of experience are presented with exorable joie de vivre. She layers realms of integrity throughout her tenacious ritual. She draws up and outward from a cracked world beyond the fact of matter or undeniable truths.

Pj Kelly: ‘Seeking’

Acrylic & medium on board. 3 x 5 x 1.5”

~ photo courtesy June Higgins

‘…there emerges the Symbolist side of Neoimpressionism or, more precisely, the relationship of Neoimpressionism to late-nineteenth – century scientific transcendentalism. The immediate source of this transcendentalism is the science of psychophysics, the study and measurement of nature, as conceived by Gustav Fechner in Elements of Psychophysics (1860). Psychophysics assumes the union of Cartesian opposites, mind and matter, body and soul, and concerns itself not with the study of matter – outer nature – but with the determination of the sense – impressions that create in us the representation of the idea of matter. The pervasiveness of this idea and attitude can be seen in a letter addressed to Henry in 1882 by the Symbolist poet and mystic writer Jules Laforgue (1860-1887), whom Kahn describes as an ‘adept of modern Buddhism.’ Laforgue declares that German Impressionism is thought to be an offshoot of Fechner’s law, which posits that the magnitude of sensation is proportional to the magnitude of the stimulus. Indeed, in its basic assumption, psychophysics can be taken as the scientific formulation of Blake’s ‘contraries,’ Baudelaire’s ‘Correspondences,’ and Chevreul’s or Henry’s ‘Complementaries.’

~ ‘Nineteenth-century Theories of Art’. Joshua Charles Taylor. University of California Press, 1987. p 530.

Laforgue’s declaration, ‘the magnitude of sensation is proportional to the magnitude of the stimulus.’ seems entirely relevant to the Kelly Frontier experience. Kelly invigorates with her defiance of normalcy. Consequential and complementary, her assertions within the magnitude of her enriching play are chatty and expansive. One forgets what means she uses to incite and invigorate. Frontier impresses.

The intellectual practice of applying psychophysical investigations to describe and understand Kelly’s work is akin to the theories adopted by George Seurat and other Neo Impressionists, translating to her use of pure colour dots juxtaposed. One might describe her work as psychophysiological chromoluminarism. Mathematician and theorist, Charles Henry’s 19^th century colour circle experiments have been described as:

‘…psychophysical investigations into autokinesis, the nature of sensory illusions, and alternate perceptual states. Thus, Henry considers light, colour, form, and sound – the basic outer components of expression that constitute ‘art’ both as physical properties, whose nature is vibratory energy, and as psychic functions that can be calculated according to the nature an intensity of the vibratory stimulus. Given a general knowledge of the nature and form of the psychophysical sense elements, the artist can use these elements to create correspondingly dynamogenous (dynamically expansive) states of consciousness. ‘

~ ‘Nineteenth-century Theories of Art’. Joshua Charles Taylor. University of California Press, 1987. pp 531-532.

Pj Kelly: 'Selfie'

Acrylic on panel. 10 x 10”

~ photo by Debora Alanna

While creating an intense vibratory stimulus, Kelly’s works provoke alternate states of consciousness. She creates instruments to attend expansive, conscious states of awareness, psychophysical experiences, and relations between non-linear internal (psychic) and external (physical) worlds.

Pj Kelly: ‘Fungi’ 1

Acrylic & medium on board. 3 x 5 x 1.5”

~ photo courtesy June Higgins

Kelly may or may not adapt / adopt Gustav Theodor Fechner’s (1802-1887) psychophsycial theories. Her works do, as his theories suggest, impact the viewer’s sensations and emotions. She imparts bursting happiness striding an abyss of query with her relentless intensity of unpretentious subject and material use. Luminosity triumphs through sharp steps between coloured layers. Collections of textures create an upheaval and turmoil throughout multitudes of circling, churning layers punctuated with dotted surfaces. Forming exultant occasions that drive the viewer to quavering smiles denotes a pulsating autokinesis in Frontier’s vibrancy. Works percolate off their cradle containment.

Pj Kelly: ‘Fungi’ 2

Acrylic & medium. 3 x 5 x 1.5"

~ photo by Debora Alanna

‘Nonrational, monstrous. When jammed into time and place it crumbles into innumerable forms. These it obliterates. Then it creates new forms and smashes them again, continuing for all eternity in this same way. There is no such thing as progress; destiny is not governed by reason; religion, morality, and great ideas are worthless consolations good only for cowards and idiots. The strong man, knowing this, confronts the world’s purposeless phantasmagoria with traquility and rejoices in dissolving the multiform, ephemeral veil of Maya.’

~ Report to Greco, Nikos Kazantzakis, Faber and Faber, London, 1973, pg. 322.

‘Maya’ was the description of uncommon influence and acumen in the earliest Sanskrit texts ^{^[1]} that evolved into the Hindu theological canon. Later books describe an elusive reality – what exists is not what it seems to be. Maya can signify ‘that which exists, but is constantly changing and thus is spiritually unreal’, and the ‘power or the principle that conceals the true character of spiritual reality’.[2] The designation ‘Maya’, has numerous and compound meanings depending on the time and place of its use.

Pj Kelly: ‘But Who Can Wait’

Acrylic & medium. 3 x 5 x 1.5"

~ photo courtesy June Higgins

Kelly’s layering, stacking, progressive confrontations of certainty has the gumption to show how jammed realities crumble into innumerable facets. She veils the ephemera and then reconstructs it, allowing the viewer to witness change from ephemera to ameliorated conditioning in the many different configurations found within each piece. Kelly shows our process because we are only human in our inane, bizarre, ever-changing frontiers.

Pj Kelly: 'Totem’ 1

Acrylic on panel. 24 x 24”

~ photo courtesy June Higgins.

Pj Kelly: 'Totem’ 1 (detail).

Pj Kelly: They are like colour totems. That’s all coloured issues. Piled up energy. Energetic piles. Waiting to transfer it all to you.

Debora Alanna: The piles are a lot higher than the piles of material in the sculptural pieces. There is ascent, where the sculpture stacks lean forward.

Pj Kelly: It’s a couple of views.

The word totem is the Anglicised word, probably through French interpretation of the Algonquian (probably Ojibwa) -doodem, in odoodeman or aoutem among the Micmacs or other First Nations on the East Coast. [3] Large wood totemic carvings of towering First Nations’ family emblems prevalent on the West Coast seem to have inspired Kelly’s two paintings titled ‘Totem’. Relations to each colour layer affiliate to the entire column and all columns within the picture plane impart a sense of familial congregations that build upright reliability. Lofting colour spines of dense connections and formative matrices with overlaid paint treatments present as symbols of how changes in intensities and directions of energy are elastic and diffractive. Kelly shows cross sections of life force measured - experiential physics. ‘Totem’ 1 is confident, propitious. ‘Totem’ 2 is a distressed chronicle with a sad film of reminiscence. Both separately and together they tell a story of how towering relationships are incalculable qualifiers of one’s life. Kelly’s totems observe decorum. They are indicators of degrees of strength. Dark grounds gesture towards sanctions, punishing adversity. ‘Totem’ 1 and ‘Totem’ 2 embody conspicuous, virtuous rallies, upward and further than can be imagined without provocation and exposure to Kelly’s thought process apparent in her work.

Pj Kelly: 'Made for You' 1.

Acrylic & medium on board. 3 x 5 x 1.5”

~ photo courtesy June Higgins

Pj Kelly: 'Made for You' 2

Acrylic & medium on board. 3 x 5 x 1.5”

~ photo courtesy June Higgins

Debora Alanna: (Homer’s Iliad quote) ‘Now on the eager razor’s edge, for life or death we stand.’ I thought that was really appropriate because your work entails things that are standing but they are so…

Pj Kelly: precarious. They look precarious, don’t they? I don’t know. I wanted to build out in layers.

Debora Alanna: You know they are very phallic?

Pj Kelly: Totally. My whole theory behind that is, we are so driven by DNA that we interpret things. I didn’t set out to make things phallic but they turned phallic. So, I got on with it, right? Okay. I made a super literal one. I thought, let’s make it super phallic. Oh, I made phallic.

Debora Alanna: I keep waiting for them to extend.

Pj Kelly: Exactly. … People say, ‘oh my god, big penises’. That’s just how we interpret things. Lines and dots make a face. Some things sticking out make a penis. That’s who we are, what’s important. Other people and their penises are important. That’s what we see. That’s what we make. That’s what I make, apparently.

When you talk about time… that’s what I think about. These are dimensional pieces. Building out – you can look back but you can’t really see what’s in there. An idea of what’s going on in the layers.

Pj Kelly: ‘Full Frontal’ 2

Acrylic & medium on board. 3 x 5 x 1.5”

~ photo courtesy June Higgins

Frontier takes us unabashedly to the unsettling, full frontal exposés of disconcerting brightness via layers of exultancy through contention of striving through trouncing and loss, what you find in the battling. Sometimes lavish cock-a-hoop layers seem askew but triumphant, miraculous consequences of the myriad layers of loving. At once planes of relief and precipices of confusion whether works are horizontal or vertical, flat or projecting we are in the realm of uninhabitable terrain. Frontier presents states of conflict through interrogatory layers of paint as incentives for resolve. Kelly combats complacency waging war against despondency through serious material play. Thorough plundering of colour and reliance on that most essential and therefore nostalgic of shapes, the circle, allows Kelly to lasso the audience into a miniaturization of embedded micro thought -anomalies that explode imposing realities into toying tests of prodigal abundance of thrilling plays.

Pj Kelly: ‘Tonic’ 1 & 2. 2013

2 - 24 x 24” panels.Acrylic on wood.

~ photo by Debora Alanna

Pj Kelly: ‘Tonic’ - Detail.

~ photo by Debora Alanna

The gallery (Polychrome Fine Arts) has included some strategic work from Kelly’s past exhibitions. The sequence of her work practise is informative historically. This strategy counters the immediate work. Kelly is known for her paintings of scored impasto acrylic surfaces with thickly dotted punctuation and dense, multilayered splotches and spheres, intense colour transits.

Like enlarged rhythmic biofeedback relays, previous works shown are horizons of possibilities with implicit enquiry.

Pj Kelly: ‘Get a Handle’ view 1

Acrylic & medium on board. 3 x 5 x 1.5”

~ photo by Debora Alanna

Pj Kelly: ‘Get a Handle’ view 2

Acrylic & medium on board. 3 x 5 x 1.5”

~ photo by Debora Alanna

Debora Alanna: I can see this is an emergent presence. I don’t even see the dots after a while.

Pj Kelly: That’s it. They are just a component. People get hung up on the dots. That’s a component I learned to master. And I would like to move on. I certainly incorporated a lot. But I am moving forward with other components.

Debora Alanna: To me, it becomes a texture, it becomes participatory particles.

Pj Kelly: ‘Mood Machine’

Acrylic & medium. 3 x 5 x 1.5"

~ photo courtesy June Higgins

For Frontier, Kelly began to cut out and stack the remnants of acrylic, colour and medium. Works rise obliquely, slant or slope deviously. Dots populate the holding surface, interfacing with extruded yielding erectiles. Layers upon layers are impenetrable, fearless intimate intricacy.

Pj Kelly: …I have been focused on making everything fronty-er, indeed.

Pj Kelly: ‘Seeking’ 2

Acrylic & medium on board. 3 x 5 x 1.5”

~ photo courtesy June Higgins

Kelly faces fear. She conquers fear of the unknown with her deliberate vitality. She recapitulates innocence in the fray of pain through valiant endurance, a dominant subject within Frontier. Kelly has now brought us close ups of the points found within accepted autonomic systems in previous work. Frontier has arrived at and disseminates profound knowledge of specific points that make up nervy conduits as composites of acrylic paint. Although we can see whereFrontier came from, Frontier is a substantial and altered scope of investigation.

Pj Kelly: ‘Soul Sandwich’ side view

Acrylic & medium on board. 3 x 5 x 1.5”

~ photo courtesy June Higgins

Pj Kelly: Frontier – installation

‘Boy’ upper

‘Soul Sandwich’ lower

~ photo by Debora Alanna

Delving into exotic and outlandish regions of insight, Kelly’s scrutiny produces striking realisations. Materials declare explicative detail. Constituent cutting and exploits pressurize remarks between episodic transitions. Kelly’s works are records, packed. Kelly’s bright and amiable tenacity diverts. Her distractions are plentiful and convincing. The unnerving impact of her raw mindful banter is not confined in crammed sandwiches of bobbing polka dotted sheets and acrylic deposits. Tiers emit a range of emotions vociferously. Spontaneous episodes of pain, glee, lust, fear, sorrow, veneration and more are disclosed through the clever cleaving of paint and layers that discharge in an abundance of consequence unique to each work.

Pj Kelly: ‘Party Hat’

Acrylic & medium on board. 3 x 5 x 1.5”

~ photo by Debora Alanna

Many intense emotions are subverted, diminished with degrees of subversion and stark or glossy intensity. With unadorned side glimpses we snatch teases approaching titillating peeps at bare skin. Kelly understands people are multilayered. Her buoyant lucid smears and smothers are composed of sliced and diced orts of knowledge. Kelly grasps and accrues how we dissect every event, blessed or bothersome, each encounter, transited between fragmented and fused smidgens of understanding. Works are amassed treasures like anecdotes emanating their prizes of tantalizing memories. Glowing and glowering colours of delectable shape splinters scrap, splay, seize our attention as winning contestations. Works speak boisterously while allowing allure to mitigate the depth of feelings involved. Oodles of discoveries resolve as terrains of Kelly’s scrutiny.

Pj Kelly: 'Exit' - side view 1

Acrylic & medium. 3 x 5 x 1.5”

~ photo courtesy June Higgins

Pj Kelly: 'Exit' - side view 2

~ photo courtesy June Higgins

Kelly conjures bracing destinations. She brings us into the midst of captivating, demanding frontiers where we are privy to salubrious revelations. One can’t help but be rapt in these strongholds. Kelly’s multidimensional compositions divulge intuitional reality. Feelings press spherically. Bodies of colour are strong and assert themselves expansively. They transcend the empirical because the works have no verifiable context. They are simply exuberance.

Frontier is Pj Kelly’s solo exhibition at the Polychrome Fine Arts gallery in Victoria BC, 5^th – 19^th March.

Pj Kelly: Frontier - installation

Past exhibitions by PJ KELLY documented on Exhibit-vic:

‘Intemperate’ – March 2013, Polychrome Fine Arts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=II_-pp7qMu4

‘Twelve Thousand Days’ – March 2012, Polychrome Fine Arts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2FJmWMIU7Q

‘Rummage’ – September 2010, Collective Works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1HmbCckge4

Interview with PJ KELLY. March 2010, Collective Works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJ1FYMKurgo

Pj Kelly

Frontier

5 -19 March 2015

77-A Fort St

Victoria BC

Polychrome Fine Arts

March 2015

Conversation 1: Selection of Facebook messages

(Pj Kelly’s work for Frontier in progress)

Debora Alanna: Wow. (re: cradle dots) Changes the visual dynamic considerably. Liking the plinth contrast as a 3rd dimension, BUT that doesn't mean the cradles don't work. Really, an in-person look see thing.

Pj Kelly: It works on some and not others. They will still be displayed on the wall. I think I haven't approached the sides because I have been focused on making everything fronty-er, indeed. I think decorating the cradle does make it a more special "thing" but some of them weren't built with that dynamic in mind, it's hard to suddenly apply it across the board.

Also, some paintings are under way. Mostly not done, because the pressure is just kicking in for the painting part, trying to figure out how to make the gestural marks with the layer rings of colour.

************************************************************

Conversation 2: Some questions answered by Pj Kelly, posed by Debora Alanna via Facebook messages

(Pj Kelly’s work for Frontier in progress)

Debora Alanna: What are you doing?

Pj Kelly: well, trying to keep myself amused and take what I do seriously at the same time. It must be important to make art, right? Or else why are so many of us driven to do it? I have written in small letters on one of my work tables “prove it " and occasionally I spot it while I’m working and I remember. Prove this is important to do, at least to myself. And the more I make, the more it proves itself. When I'm immersed in process, it proves itself.

Debora Alanna: Your work seems to be just beyond the edge of reason. Do you agree? Please comment.

Pj Kelly: yes, this seems reasonable.

I am super drawn to both abstraction and realism. I love to draw and I love to see what it is that we recognize in something. Our brains seem set up to filter out most stuff and spot what's important to us. So what is important to us? Other humans are the most important thing, for sure.

With the work I have been doing, combining dots and circles and lines abstractly, but our brains spot faces and human elements that we recognize. Without intending to, these things occur, and in some cases, I work with them.

our brains are so symbolic. In drawing, I am trying to draw what is there in an interesting way, People say, wow, look, you can draw what's there. It's a great skill. But the other approach, layering "abstract" elements, also produces recognizable imagery and without the intention. So. I have these two approaches and I am meeting somewhere in the middle.

Pj Kelly: yes, beyond tidy comprehension is awesome. I wonder what are these things. I love to make things. It is totally research, I am completely process oriented. The more I work, the more I want to work, the more avenues open. I think there are two schools of art making. Some people have a vision and set out to complete it. They know from the start what they want out of the work. I don't work like that at all. I used to think this was a handicap, but it's just the way it is. The things I can create are far more interesting than anything I could think up. My brain just gets in the way for most things.

Debora Alanna: Your work seem to be stacks of time frames, collections of strength gone awry yet holding onto integrity. Would you agree that time is a factor, and if it is, how so?

Pj Kelly: time is definitely a factor. the layers of dots the layers of paint the layers of time changing the way we perceive everything. Most things look different through the filter of time, and the layers of elements are there obscuring what is going on in the first place. time time time. over time I see where the weaknesses are and try to make the things stronger. Integrity is important.

and in my process time is important. I work with lots of things going on at once. I have so many pieces on the go. When I get stuck, it is easy for me to pull out something that I haven't worked on in a long time and see it objectively and be able to work on it again.

Debora Alanna: Your works for this show are singular entities in a fathomless land. What is a reason why you have created spotted borders ( cradle supports) for your individual pieces?

PJ KELLY: more to do with time again! the dimensions we live in , not the only dimensions available, just the ones we are aware of.

Debora Alanna: What if any artists living or dead are your influences? Or - are there any others (non-visual artists i.e. writers, philosophers etc., people) that have influenced you?

I know the best art visual art makes me have a sharp warm feeling in my solar plexus. I saw one by John Hartman the other day that gave me that feeling. OOOOOOOOOOOOO. I have it on my page. I feel like the work I’m doing right now, it's kind of like art school in public. I'm still learning so much. I see where I want to go, and I'm afraid. I fill my work with texture to cover for the lack of substance.

when i think of who I love as artists, I think of going to the dentist when I was a kid and my dentist, Dr. VanDerHaagen, had Maxwell Bates paintings on his walls in where he was doing the fillings and everywhere. Probably not all Maxwell Bates! But I totally remember those and thinking those were pretty neat. Clown figures. I love that. And my best friend, her dad was a doctor, her parents were divorced. And he had this huge painting, it was at least five feet square, called Sisyphus and huge expressionist guy pushing rock up hill, he had a dong! He had all sorts of interesting art at his place. My parents had framed prints of a building in Virginia they thought were pretty swell. This Sisyphus thing was mind blowing! That art could be like that!

I love the american abstract expressionists, I love Willem deKooning , I love that raw intensity. I love Lucien Freud and Francis Bacon, Also love Sol Lewitt . And all the german expressionists too, dark outlines and wild colours. Hunderwasser.

I am actually looking forward to getting this show over with so I can get on with trying to paint. You have made me want to push myself to try and get at least a couple of the expressionist paintings on paper done in time for showing. that is where I really want to go, but i'm afraid.

Not that I don't end up loving my work, but it's like a mother's love, isn't it. Hard to be objective sometimes. But that is where I aim for if I have the courage. I really do want to use my representational skills but I don't know yet what story to tell. I have always worked with old family photos because I have so many of them and I think DNA is strong, those folks are in my cells. And what is my story? Who wants to hear that? It's hard to imagine that you can just present something whether anyone is interested or not.

************************************************************

Conversation 3 – in person interview with Pj Kelly at her studio by Debora Alanna

(Pj Kelly’s work for Frontier in progress)

Pj Kelly: I don’t know why anything influences me. I don’t think about anything. I have answers, okay. So it’s all over now. That’s it.

Debora Alanna: Let me read you a quote I found today, which I thought was appropriate.

Pj Kelly: Okay.

Debora Alanna: This is from a translation of Homer’s Iliad, an excerpt from the text translated by George Chapman in 1611. He wrote, he translated Homer to say, “Now on the eager razor’s edge, for life or death we stand.” I thought that was really appropriate because your work entails things that are standing but they are so…

Pj Kelly: precarious. They look precarious, don’t they.

Debora Alanna: Ya.

Pj Kelly: I am trying to make them much super stronger than they look. Because I keep dropping them and they break off. Then I put them back together. Here we go, right?

I don’t know. I wanted to build out in layers.

Debora Alanna: You know they are very phallic?

Pj Kelly: Totally.

My whole theory behind that is, we are so driven by DNA that we interpret things. I didn’t set out to make things phallic but they turned phallic. So, I got on with it, right? Okay. I made a super literal one. I thought, let’s make it super phallic. Oh, I made phallic.

Debora Alanna: I keep waiting for them to extend.

Pj Kelly: Exactly. It’s like - art for the blind.

The texture affects me a lot.

I had an older brother that died. About ten or eleven years ago. He was losing his vision before he died. I was starting to go to art school and make art then.

I was, like, ‘holy fuck, he’s losing his vision. He can’t see.’ I started to think about things like that. What do things feel like? What does it feel like if you couldn’t see. What would happen if I couldn’t see? How would I do this?

My brother said he could hear everything so clearly. He could smell everything. He couldn’t see so his other senses were sharpened.

I am so interested in sharpening my visual sense. When I started to go to art classes in my 30s, one of my first painting instructors said, ‘well, you can’t see the colours yet.’ I thought, you know you are right. There are these distinctions that we call warm and cool. Everything. It’s all there. You just have to see it.

What was the question?

Debora Alanna: Going back to the quote (from Homer)… “Now on the eager razor’s edge, for life or death we stand.” You have experienced death in your family, recently with a friend. Doe the quote apply to, relate to your work?

Pj Kelly: It is, it is. Yes, That’s making everything much…worth doing. My friend who died, Chris. I have known him since we were eight years old. Awesome guy. Watching him fade out – Be glad to be alive. Just be alive.

The hospice called, they said, Chris is asking for you. His breathing is very shallow. I went in and held his hand. He asked the nurse to angle him so he could see me. He couldn’t see very much. He said, ‘open the blinds’. I opened the curtains. His breathing sped up and slowed down. He died. I am less afraid of dying, although I don’t like the whole leading up to death part. He had cancer, the second time. He had very bad radiation wounds. He never recovered from it. He was so sick. I don’t think I would do treatment. I would fade from memory. My mom’s boyfriend is 80. He’s got cancer.. He is going to have radiation treatments. 80? I don’t know. How fast is the really cancer spreading that you are willing to go through that?

The mindless joy of being alive. This is what I am headed for. I come here (into the studio), close that door, man. I just want to be immersed in colour. Think about being alive, making things that make me feel like –whoooh - that looks good.

When you talk about time… that’s what I think about. These are dimensional pieces. Building out – you can look back but you can’t really see what’s in there. An idea of what’s going on in the layers.

Debora Alanna: You can peek on the sides.

Pj Kelly: You can see what is under there, a little bit. Just looking at it, it’s hard to see.

Debora Alanna: It blends in with the background. Agreeable.

Pj Kelly: Ya.

I think we have such a limited idea of dimension.

Debora Alanna: I think society does.

Pj Kelly: What I am doing is assembly. I think why I am getting into it is because the more I work, the more materials I have. Things can start to get way more interesting. It’s like, ‘oh, try this.’ ‘oh, try this.’

The problems I having now is with the 2 dimensional pieces. I am really driven to paint. And I don’t know what I am doing.

Debora Alanna: Your drawings are so strong. I keep looking for what you draw in your coloured layers, in the construct. I don’ see it. Where did it go?

Pj Kelly: I know. I don’t know how to introduce it. I am slowly trying to sneak it in so you can’t see it.

I am trying to create depth. My main concern right now is depth. I am trying to create space. I am not so concerned with filling it. That is what I am feeling is often missing. What is my subject matter? Is it just the materials? Is that just what it is about? Maybe that is just what it is about. Is that valid? Can you do that?

Debora Alanna: Yes you can. There are many dimensions to your work.

Pj Kelly: People say, ‘oh my god, big penises’. That’s just how we interpret things. Lines and dots make a face. Some things sticking out make a penis. That’s who we are, what’s important. Other people and their penises are important. That’s what we see. That’s what we make. That’s what I make, apparently. Maybe when it’s past being really important to me it will become symbolic.

You see the young blush of love – I remember that. I am nowhere near that anymore. I can only do plastic imitations of that action.

Debora Alanna: I don’t believe that for a second.

Pj Kelly: Then there are things that accidentally come together. This is my favourite thing that I made - It just turned into that. It worked out so cool.

The next thing is more realism.

I started making the flatter ones. They are kind of maquets, too. I would love to – I think I could make bigger things. Who can afford it? I use layers of dried medium, paint and stuff. This size makes the material easy to work with. (3 x 4 x 1.5”)

You put it there, and you say, oh, there’s a face. The elements combine, and that’s what they do. Do you fight it or not? I don’t know. Sometimes you do, sometimes you don’t.

Debora Alanna: Would you display them flat?

Pj Kelly: For sure, some.

I think the dotted base has worked.

Debora Alanna: It does work. You have layers of dots that connect, coincide.

Pj Kelly: I am trying to set them up in groups of 3, relating to each other.

Debora Alanna: They are looking for direction.

Pj Kelly: Exactly. Which way, which way? This way.

This one also has a little penis right on top. People think that happened. Is it a face or penis? It can be both because of that open part of the thing.

Debora Alanna: Some French people I knew called it ‘little bird’.

PJ Kelly: Oh, that little bird woke me up this morning. Naughty, naughty.

Debora Alanna: Some people call it pecker.

Debora Alanna: What’s that about?

Pj Kelly: They are like colour totems. That’s all coloured issues. Piled up energy. Energetic piles. Waiting to transfer it all to you.

Debora Alanna: The piles are a lot higher than the piles of material in the sculptural pieces. There is ascent, where the sculpture stacks lean forward.

Pj Kelly: It’s a couple of views. When I started, I thought I would like to do paintings (of the works on cradles). I didn’t know how the actual works would turn out. They turned out into something else from what I had in mind. It was how it happened. That was interesting to me too. I am not going to know what I am going to do when I have an idea. I start with one idea and it is - it’s like I have to have an idea so I can reject it and move on to what I don’t know what I am going to do. I was picturing something, which I still might do, something more literal. I would like to an interpretation of them in oil. A more literal interpretation.

I am drawn in my mind to really paint. I love it.

Then there are these.

Debora Alanna: They are vignettes.

Pj Kelly: Ya. There are medium layers, creating depth. Interesting to me.

Debora Alanna: You’ve got dots onto of these paintings.

Pj Kelly: These paintings are from six or seven years ago. When I was learning how to paint, when I was attracted to the dots… I liked the dot because I was painting from old pictures. I thought, well, they are not my memories. The dots separate the image from the viewer. They are my mom’s memory. That is my separation from what is going on. That’s what is going on.

Debora Alanna: I like the shadows.

Pj Kelly: That’s a photo of my mom when she was little. That’s her mom and my mom. It is the creepiest little picture. Awesome. I decided I liked the creepiness of it. There’s horrible stories about my mother’s childhood. My step brother hid me in closets and were mean to me. Whooooowho.

My mom and my brother (another work).

Debora Alanna: I find this image very disturbing. Maybe because of the smile on your brother, a shadow smile? And the building is biting.

Pj Kelly: That’s probably because it looks pleasant but it wasn’t pleasant being a divorced mom in the 50s, with your kids farmed out to take care of and all that shit. And that’s my brother that died about 10 years ago, right about when I painted that.

Debora Alanna: Little man.

Pj Kelly: A big influence on me was Bill Porteous. He was one of the first people I studied with. I learned to draw. What drawing I learned I learned from him, which was amazing. He had just opened his own teaching place. Some days it was just me and him and this other woman there, Helen the nun. We would sit there and draw. That was a big influence on me just because he took me seriously. I had just started doing it. When I started to draw and I could see that I could draw, he said, ‘I don’t think you are a tourist.’ That was amazing to me, that you just said that to me.

Debora Alanna: What a great thing to say.

Pj Kelly: Ya. I had just started.

My kids were babies. That’s why I started doing it. I thought, I have got to get out of this house. I thought, go learn to draw. Just go do it. Then it was, fuck, I can do this. I could see. Once I could see, then it was a matter of refining skills. When you can see, then it is just technique.

What (Bill Porteous) he said , I don’t think you are just a tourist, is always in my head. He has been a huge influence on me.

When I started doing abstract work – it’s funny, being an artist – I have always done crafts. When I was a kid I didn’t draw because I couldn’t draw. I thought you had to know how. I thought I wasn’t going to challenge myself to do it because I could do other things. I thought I would write. People like that. But, in my mind, I couldn’t be an artist because I couldn’t draw, in my mind. So when I could draw, I thought, clearly, I have been an artist my whole life and I just didn’t know it. It thought it is not possible if you can’t draw.

All my life I have been attracted to colour. Always in school I would divide things up into colours, fill them in. I thought it was stupid. I liked doing it. It is nice to me that it is not stupid. It is a valid way to spend your life.

Learning that you can manipulate paint in different ways – the different angles, squeegees, dots, combining it all, going forward. I can do whatever I want. I can start with squeegees, add dots. Dry things, add them, take them out.

I don’t read as much as I used to. Before I made art I was a reader. Read like crazy. I don’t read much anymore. Now I just sound illiterate.

Debora Alanna: Do you find your speech is lapsing the more you do visual things?

Pj Kelly: Totally.

I was very verbal and quite proud of it. Really good. I don’t write anymore. I used to write a lot. I would write but I don’t feel I have anything to say. A lot of issues with my art is I don’t think I have anything to say.

I feel with art I can pretend. There’s a lot of the ‘emperors new clothes’ going on. You can hang stuff and people will say, oh, lovely, you are having a show. It doesn’t need to mean anything. There is a lot of that goes on. With writing, you can’t. You have to have something to say. I felt my mom is going to outlive me. If my mom dies, then I will write. It ain’t going to happen.

Maybe stand up comedy. Maybe that’s my next thing. I think I am a performer, for sure. I took drama classes when I was a kid. I wasn’t an actor because I can’t tone it down and bring subtleties out. But I am totally a performer. I am sorry I didn’t get into it more. When I was doing that it only meant one thing. Acting. You can’t do that. I didn’t look into - maybe I should learn to sing, perform.

Debora Alanna: There are different ways of performing.

Pj Kelly: Ya.

Debora Alanna: Before, it was just in a proscenium stage, or in the round. It was very intense.

Pj Kelly: Memorise, do it. It was ‘acting’. I missed when we were younger, improv, having fun. Then I got stage fright because I couldn’t do it. And get up in front of people. It was like, fuck, no way. I don’t do that anymore.

Debora Alanna: What about music?

Pj Kelly: I love music. But I don’t have any musical skills, per se.

Debora Alanna: But influences?

Pj Kelly: Oh. I love to listen to jazz. I have been listening to a lot of Bill Evans. Miles Davis. Great in the background. I like loud music too. And old music from the 70s, from my childhood. I have been listening to a lot of 70s pop music while I am working, putting on old things.

Debora Alanna: You were in a punk band.

Pj Kelly: Ya. My friend had a punk band, so they let me practice with them when I am around. She has a punk rock choir. We started that in Victoria. She’s the choir director. She moved away. It is very successful in Power River. But I missed it.

I listen to podcasts when I work. I listen to comedy podcasts like crazy. I like hearing comedians interviewed because they talk about their creative process. Really openly, in podcasts. There this guy named Marc Maron who does this this podcast calle WFF, what the fuck, Its comedians talking – they are always talking about their process. It is so interesting. It is like any creative process. When comedians talk, it is interesting. Comedians are funny when they are talking. They are talking about their process at the same time. I listen to tons of podcasts.

Debora Alanna: That’s a great idea.

Pj Kelly: I used to read. It was my addiction. I read constantly. I haven’t read much at all recently.

Debora Alanna: You seem to be able to sustain your sense of fun.

You have a good support system.

Pj Kelly: Chris would say, don’t waste time mourning me when you have that show. He wanted to be alive for the show. He would be really chocked blue in grief, if I was not able to work.

All right Chris.

Debora Alanna: You are redefining grief.

Pj Kelly: That’s the lesson. You are alive. If you are not in complete agony, you are doing pretty good. You should appreciate it. That’s the lesson I got from Chris. Everything he went through, as sick as he was, every day of his illness, pretty much.

I am so lucky. I can sit. I can sleep. I can shit. I can eat. Never mind the bonus things.

Debora Alanna: True enough.

Pj Kelly: It is a real taste of mortality that we are just such physical beings. We are so physical, wrapped in our physical being that – we are so tied to it. We dry up like a flower. When I think of him lying there, like a grey skeleton he turned into. It is, like a flower not in bloom anymore. He was ready to go. That energy isn’t in him.

Debora Alanna: Somewhere in the ephemera.

Pj Kelly: That’s right.

I don’t believe in God or heaven or hell or anything. So, he is energy. Where ever you go before you are born. That’s where you go when you are dead.

The sex drive - It never dies. That’s what my mom says. My mom is going to be 80 at the end of the month, and she says the sex drive never ends in people. It never stops causing trouble. The older you are, you think it’s going to stop. People just keep wanting to have sex.

Where there’s life there’s hope.

Talent is not money. Please grow up and be pragmatic children. If I can’t be the good example, let me be a horrible warning.

That was the basis of my depression. I felt like shit. That’s not a way to raise kids, around that. I really regret having been so ill when my kids were little. I wandered around talking about what a piece of shit I was, in front of them all the time. You can’t do that. Oh, I didn’t know.

Debora Alanna: In hindsight, right. Thankfully will live beyond that.

Pj Kelly: Exactly. Better now. Glad I don’t feel that way anymore. Just glad to not feel that way anymore. I think that’s it, too. Because I have had a lot of depression, art for me is, fuck that. This is what I do to not be depressed. People say, your work is so happy. Ya, your fuckin’ right it’s happy. Have you tried real life? It’s full of shit and pain and misery and death. .I close the door and make something happy. Cause I don’t… this is the escape. Okay, I can’t think about that. I am going to make art.

And when I really can’t think about things, that’s when I draw. It’s because the most mentally - representational work – drawing or painting engages your mind in that puzzle making way that you can’t think about other things at all. I really like that a lot. That is what really hooked me, the flow of the time when I first started taking drawing classes. Three hours went just like that (snapping fingers). It’s like, whoa, where did that go? Oh, look what I did. It’s magic.

It’s still kinda like magic when I draw something. I feel like – I always start thinking… I don’t know I make a mark and hope for the best. You know how it builds on everything.

Debora Alanna: Have you ever done life drawing?

Pj Kelly: Oh, ya. Just not in a long time, not for ages. I’d love to go back and do some. I got put off by the whole, you gotta get there and get a good seat.

When I first started going to life drawing, I couldn’t really draw. When I think about it now, I was fuckin’ brave. Cause I just went and did it even though I couldn’t draw. It was a room full of artists. That took a lot of balls for me. He said to me one day, he said, ‘well, tell me about you…. drawing… blab la blah’. ....I said, ‘well I took a class called anyone could draw. I said. It turns out its true. He said, ‘well that’s true, anyone can draw, but few can do it well’. For years I took that as a personal affront. Fuck you old man.

So, a couple of years ago I go, I went to the UVic to the life drawing they have there in the Visual Arts. They’ve got a really nice set up. I got there a little late. I am trying to set up. It turns out I am right in front of this guy. He goes, ‘you are blocking my view’. I can’t even remember. He was really obnoxious. I said,’ I am just trying to set up. I am not going to be standing in front of you the whole fucking time, old fucking man’. Not quite like that, but I am sure somewhat like that. Because I get less and less good at holding things in as I get older. Of course, the beauty of age is that you have less respect for age. You are not an old man now, you are practically one of my peers. So fuck off. He was like – so I got pissed off and stomped out of there. Fuck you. Another friend of mine who was there was sitting beside him with earphones on. He was – ‘you are not going to have those ear phones on the whole time, are you?’ She’s like, ‘they’re ear phones.’ He’s just an old curmudgeon.

Debora Alanna: Looking for trouble.

Pj Kelly: I know. ‘But few can do it well.’ To me, that was like a challenge. He was probably one of the reasons I learned to draw so well. Fuck you old man. You will drop dead in a year. I am going to come and draw on your grave.

I will be working, working, working right up until the show. I don’t know even know if there is – I am trying to separate what is finished. There is a bunch of stuff finished. I am trying desperately not to start new things. But that’s a problem too, when I get going. I guess it is all self generating. Which is awesome. But it is just, like, focus on… I am so good at starting things. So not so great at finishing. Probably because I do not have it in mind what I am doing, often. So I don’t’ know where the end point is. Or the direction.

But I think it is all adding up over the years. It is starting to refine itself into something. I keep feeling like that – if I just keep doing it, it will take care of itself. I shouldn’t think of it.

And that is a lot of the dots, too. The dot is so unthreatening as a little, small unit of mark.

Debora Alanna: It is so perfect, too.

Pj Kelly: Ya. A small perfect mark that you can make, that is unthreatening, right? It’s like, if I just make dots on things, I am not afraid of what I am doing. Because it is just a dot. How much of a statement can I make? You know? I guess I am afraid to say things. So a dot seems like a really unthreatening way to say things.

Debora Alanna: There are so many dots.

Pj Kelly: I have a lot to say.

Debora Alanna: That’s it. Look at Yayoi Kusama.

Pj Kelly: I know, I know. I was doing dots before I knew who she was. I’ve seen her work a bit. Then Wendy Welch said.. Then I thought, I don’t even know who she is. I looked her up. Then, ‘oh, her’, I know her work. The more I looked at it, the more - I can’t even look at it. because it is overwhelming me with – that she’s done all of this. Right now, I am having a hard time looking at anybody’s art. Because I am so receptive. That was great. Ya. I couldn’t even look at her stuff. But she’s awesome. I love the big sculptural things. Wow. Just fabulous. Love her work so much. Just , the big… and her escaping from her mental illness, into her work is fabulous. What a great way to deal with what you have been dealt. She is pretty inspiring, for sure.

It is hard not to copy other people.

Debora Alanna: It’s like that for anyone in the art racket. Does that mean, because you use turquoise, does that mean you are someone who uses turquoise, someone defined by that?

Pj Kelly: That’s like if - someone said to me – (asked) if I am influenced by aboriginal art from Australia. Not even a little bit. I have seen it. But it doesn’t influence me.

Debora Alanna: Because they use that patterning.

Pj Kelly: Ya. They are doing patterns and things. What they are doing is completely different. I think.

Debora Alanna: Because it comes from dreamscapes.

Pj Kelly: Ya. But then again, I am also afraid to look at it because I don’t want to be influenced by what they are doing. I am in this weird place where I want to - when this show is over I won’t be afraid of influences. Right now, I just want to get this work done, without being all like ‘ahhh’.

I would love to do more art history, study more. I would love to go to art school. That would be awesome.

Debora Alanna: I can see this is an emergent presence. I don’t even see the dots after a while.

Debora Alanna: To me, it becomes a texture, it becomes participatory particles. Like Connie Michele Morey’s felt balls.

Pj Kelly: They’re great.

Debora Alanna: That’s a felt manifestation of the dots. She talks about particles and their oscillation, which is definitely here. The vibrancy.

Pj Kelly: It’s tapping into other layers of dimensions. Every layer of dots could be a layer of dimension. It is all there. All rich. There’s some that of that experience in everything. We don’t pay attention most of the time.

Debora Alanna: It is like looking into a microscope without having one in front of you. You bring it out.

Pj Kelly: Focus. It is poetry. That is how I have been thinking of this. It is like -

Raising my kids, I haven’t had time to do big work. I love to do big work. I look forward to doing larger work, but I only have time for poetry. I can’t write an novel. I can only do isolated lines. That I am going over and over and over. That’s what I think of this work. It is like little poems that are like - okay, let’s get it down to exactly the right word. Because I don’t have time in my life to write n novel right now. I can only work, be these few words at a time.

That’s what the smaller pieces are like to me. I will just sharpen up, on these.

Debora Alanna: I really like that. That’s a perfect way of describing your work.

Pj Kelly: I definitely look forward to stretching. My children are almost grown. I am beginning to feel – I don’t have perfect self esteem yet, but I have a lot of confidence. I still don’t feel great but I am not afraid to put myself out there, because I feel like – whatever. I think turning 50 has been fabulous. I love being this age. Who gives a shit. I don’t really care about anybody and what they think anymore. I made it this far doing this. Somebody likes it. I am starting to get over my imposter syndrome a little bit, in that I am no more an imposter than anybody else. We are all just out here juggling and trying to - we are doing it because it is important. Some people have a better grasp on why than me.

I feel like an imposter because for so long not knowing it was okay for this to be important. And that was because I don’t know why I am doing it. It can’t be real. I must be fake because I am just faking it. But, no. I am just doing it. Just doing it makes it real. You don’t have to have some educated thesis about what you are doing, I don’t think.

Debora Alanna: You have to tune naysayers out.

Pj Kelly: That’s true. We have got all the power. The life giving power.

I don’t think we are built to take on this kind of information (news). What’s going on around. Too much. Overwhelming. People downtown some days. There’s people, every one of them. They have a life. Look at them all. Lives, their energy. Their own thoughts, feelings. Their own everything. There’s seven billion of us on the planet. With this energy in us. Crazy.

I am in here making happy stacks of colour. Happy stacks. Give me my happy stacks.

Debora Alanna: We all have stacks, stacks of clothes, stacks of books.

Pj Kelly: Shifting sands of the Sahara. Things are constantly changing – everything has got to be on wheels, constantly moving. What am I working on now? I will stack it up – over there. Stack it all up over there. Pull things to the front.

I have been thinking about getting a dremel, to carving into this material. It would be fun. And the cradles. I have got to hop off the cradles. Blocks work.

Getting interesting. I am interested. It’s nice when you are interested in your own work. That’s what I keep thinking. Just make stuff you like. Don’t worry. Because you are going to end up with most of it anyway.

Things. That’s the problem with art. It has to be cared for after it is made. That can’t be the end of it. Now it is made. Only if you sell it to someone else. Else it is a thing to fucking look after.

I have given lots of work away. When I was a kid in high school, I used to love to make stuff and give it all to my friends. Here, I made you a little dinosaur. People still have all those things. It’s like the cat dragging in the rat. Oh, look. Look what I made you. Now here, you take it and you can just love me now, okay. I brought you something nice. I love you. Love me.