Through the Looking Glass.
Artist Kelly Green creates as many as 10 impossible things before breakfast.
By Madeline Lunsford
Look up the word “ freewheeling” in the dictionary, and you’re likely to stumble across a photo of Fayetteville-based artist, Kelly Green. Green has worked extensively in just about every mode and medium of art imaginable; including traditional canvas work, vinyl toys, clay sculpture, pen and ink and countless other formats. When searching for inspiration, Green will often borrow liberally from childhood memories and interests such as Alice in Wonderland.
FEED: Some of your art couples woodland or fairy-tale imagery with political commentary. Is this purely aesthetic or do you see connections, however tenuous, between these two seemingly contradictory themes?
GREEN: It’s funny, you know, I do do that! (laughs) I guess I can kind of see a connection, because most political stuff that you see is make-believe. We never really know what’s going on, you know? (laughs) The political aspect came up because I’m constantly thinking about politics, because it’s constantly in your face. Making fun of that stuff is a good way for me to absorb it. Combining old subject matter with new subject matter–I know a lot of people probably don’t consider some of that imagery to be political, but to me it definitely could be. [in folklore] the owl is always the “information keeper,” so it could be symbolic of the C.I.A., in a way.
FEED: Alice in Wonderland factors very prominently into a lot your work. What, specifically, about this story resonates with you?
GREEN: For me, it’s mostly a childhood thing. My mother read Alice in Wonderland to me. I recited parts of it, specifically the Jabberwocky, over and over. So, it’s a story I’m really familiar with. So, there’s a sub-conscience influence, I suppose. But Alice is everywhere in pop-culture now. I think that it kind of gets passed along from generation to generation.
FEED: Countless artists have looked to Alice in Wonderland for inspiration, but the majority of these renderings tend to skew either toward the creepy and perverse, or a more friendly, psychedelic style. I’ve noticed that you embrace both trends in your art…
GREEN: I guess I do “Creepy-cute.” It’s all very cute on the surface, but then there’s that whole “little girl lost” aspect, that element of fear… Being lost in a place where you don’t really know what’s going on. I don’t know, when I try to do it one way it sort
of comes off as both. (laughs) It may be a sub-conscience thing; I tend to have a lot of “little girls” in my art.
FEED: You work in several different mediums; do you have a preference?
Green: I kind of like them all, but I generally favor whatever it is that I’m not supposed to be doing. If I have ten or eight commissions, I won’t want to work on them, so I’ll retreat to an opposite medium.
FEED: Which medium would you consider to be the most difficult to work with?
GREEN: They all have their challenges, for sure. I would say pen and ink is the most difficult. I tend to destroy a lot of pens because they’re just so tiny and I’m not very gentle with them. I don’t find the toys to be difficult at all, those just kind of “happen.” Once you really learn a technique, it then becomes simply a matter of learning how to correct stuff when problems arise.
FEED: In your web-store, you sell several fun, interactive items such as puzzles and toys. Do you feel as though it’s important for art to be something that can be embraced and played with?
GREEN: Yes, I think it should be. I had to be talked into the puzzles–that was an idea an elf came up with. (laughs) I was initially against the mass-production of my art, but it’s really cool to see so many people have a little piece of my work in their house.
To see more of Green’s art, visit: frootkake.jalbum.net/ Or visit her booth on Maxwell St., every fourth Friday in historic downtown Fayetteville.
