Artist-in-Residence

Kelly's Gallery & Essays
Where's Kelly?
Endangered Species Information
Kelly's progress

Kelly Buntin Johnson is the Johnson County Library’s 2007 Artist in Residence. She will be creating work from Sept. 4 - 28, 2007 at the Central Resource Library and will tour several other locations. For details on where she'll be, please visit the Where's Kelly? Web page.

Here is how Kelly describes her work and her methodology:

"I am inspired by the beliefs and spiritual practices of our global ancestors. The tangible shards of their existence, both common-place and esoteric, are fascinating objects, clues through which we can study their ways and honor their lives.

I salvage discarded relics for materials with which to give form to the ideas that come to me in my own daily life. It pleases me to give a found or cast-off object, such as an embroidered cloth butterfly potholder or a scrap of linoleum, new significance by incorporating it into a piece I am creating.

I am often intrigued by odd bits of knowledge and information gleaned from my reading or that I hear on community and public radio programs. A story or anecdote may pique my interest, and if it stays with me, I then contemplate how to transmute its message into physical form. These inspirations will lead me to select a memento that speaks to me, and at that point ideas intertwine with craft as I hand-sew chosen relics with leather and European glass seed beads.

For me, the interrelationship of ideas and artifacts represents a holistic link between past and present, between spirit and physicality. As an artist and a preservationist, I feel my role is to wipe away the cobwebs of antiquity, and to preserve and reanimate the relics of our forebears by integrating them into new works with a life and a story of their own."

Find more information about Kelly and see many more images of her work on her Web site Diddy-Wa-Diddy.com.

Art in the Stacks
Are you an artist looking for a venue to display your work? Consider having a show at the library. Check out our Art in the Stacks program: www.jocolibrary.org/artinthestacks   

This Artist-in-Residence program was made possible through the generous support of the William T. Kemper Foundation and the Johnson County Library Foundation.

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