Western Washington University Associate Professor of Ceramics and Foundations Ryan Wilson Kelly was raised in a house of creatives — his mother is a painter, his father a writer and his older brother a ceramicist. He recalls interacting with the potter’s wheel for the first time one Christmas break in high school.
Something about the engagement with that material was both captivating and frustrating, Kelly said.
Kelly has become especially apt at capturing expression in stoneware, a skill he fostered along with his appreciation for the aesthetics and storytelling traditions of puppetry.
“I am making characters or things with faces that seem like elements from a narrative or seem suggestive of a character that you could imagine in a particular setting,” Kelly said. “They oftentimes have kind of exaggerated features, in the same way that a puppet is playing off of archetypes or stereotypes.”
Kelly is among a collection of 12 Pacific Northwest-based ceramicists featured in an upcoming Museum of Northwest Art (MoNA) exhibition in La Conner, Washington, from Jan. 25 through May 11. The inaugural exhibition, “Build Me Up, Tear Me Down, Why Don’t You Love Me Babe Like There’s No One Around,” marks the beginning of a new series of thematic exhibitions by the museum: the “MoNA Invitationals.”
Ashley Mask is an assistant professor of art and museum education at Western. Beginning several decades ago, “museums became more conscious of and compassionate for their visitors and the perspectives and experiences that visitors bring to the museum,” Mask said in an email.
The concept of the art invitational aims to center both the experience of the visitor and the artist.
“It is almost a personal invite from the curator to the artist,” said Stefano Catalani, executive director and chief curator at MoNA. “It’s a good way to focus the attention on something through the eye of the curator.”
Xandra Blackburn is a program manager at Allied Arts of Bellingham. One of Blackburn’s primary roles is the curation of gallery shows.
“When I am laying out how, where the art will be, I’m always thinking about the experience of the viewer,” Blackburn said.
Catalani first encountered Kelly’s work over a year ago in Seattle and was intrigued by the influence of consumer culture and Americana in his pieces. Kelly was grateful to have received Catalani’s invite.
“I am very excited [about] the other people that are included in this exhibition, some ceramic heroes of mine, like Patti Warashina and Tip Toland,” Kelly said. “To be included alongside them is a big honor for me.”
Warashina and Toland are both internationally acclaimed, Washington-born ceramic sculptors famous for their approaches to realism.
Catalani desired to create something “intergenerational” and “to reiterate the importance of this medium,” a medium he said has lost attention from museums and institutions in the last decade.
“In our contemporary political, cultural and economic climate, museums can be an important place for coming together, even across differences,” Mask said in an email. “Art can be the vessel through which we connect with others. A powerful idea indeed.”
Kelly notes a “definite queerness or gayness” to his component of the exhibit. His collection is meant to be a replication of a set of collectible objects arranged by an imaginary collector, Kelly said.
“In my imagination, that person is an obsessive queer who collects things that tell a particular story and communicate something about their value judgments,” Kelly said.
Themes like the power of irony, empowerment and laughter as a political tool are threads that run through the work of Kelly and the other ceramicists featured in “Build Me Up, Tear Me Down, Why Don’t You Love Me Babe Like There’s No One Around.”
Examining an artist’s work is really like “experiencing something of their existence,” Blackburn said. “You can experience the internal world of someone in a way that we wouldn’t otherwise.”
Blackburn and Kelly agree in this regard. Examining an art piece offers a peek into the artist’s mind.
Kelly said he wants his objects in this exhibition to not just be a conversation starter but to “spark your imagination.”
“Ultimately, I hope that people who are witnessing my work will… feel at liberty to and welcomed to laugh or to think something is ugly or funny,” said Kelly.
Josh Hernandez (he/they) is a campus news reporter for The Front this quarter. He is a third-year journalism news/ed major. Outside of journalism, his other interests include literature, geography, and music history. You can reach him at joshhernandez.thefront@gmail.com.
