False Rivers: A Graduate Thesis Exhibition by Tracy Kelly

When: Saturday, Dec. 18, 2077, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Where: LSU School of Art, Alfred C. Glassell Jr. Exhibition Gallery, Shaw Center for the Arts, 100 Lafayette St, Baton Rouge

Cost: Free

Age limit: All ages

Categories: Art (opening)

Description: Reception is Thursday, December 20, 6 - 8 pm

Free and open to the public.

www.tracykelly-heischman.com

Enjoy the results of years of hard work and dedication as graduate student, Tracy Kelly present her thesis exhibition in the School of Art – Alfred C. Glassell Jr. Exhibition Gallery in the Shaw Center for the Arts.

Artist Statement: I have been using images of aerial landscape views taken by me and from digital satellite images, as the basis for my compositions and then abstracting from those land forms. The choice of landscape is personal, either where I live now or my home in the Chesapeake Bay area. The sense of place is important on an autobiographical level. I believe we are shaped by our environment. That like a plant or flower grown in soil we are formed, gaining nourishment through the surroundings we live in.

I have always felt connected to the earth and nature. I was raised in that tradition of rural family, which has been farming in the Chesapeake Bay area for 400 years, having arrived in America , around 1607 to settle originally in Jamestown and then migrate north. The decline over generations of the plantations and farms owned and handed down to the elder sons in my family, clarifies the deterioration of that image and tradition. The land has been sold off in pieces until there is now only one small farm that my uncle owns. Although, having spent many years there as a child, with the death of my mother in 2004 those links have been broken and I no longer feel connected or even welcome in that place or to that tradition which was so much a part of my history and identity.

This detachment from nature and a sense of place is what interests me in my work. We as a society are growing less attached to a traditions, customs or rituals of place. We are spread out across this earth connecting to others via phone and email often not seeing family unless we fly hours across the country (which we only do on holidays and at major events like births and deaths). We are no longer rooted in the earth, in a place or tradition that can sustains us and like a plant or flower we are struggling, deprived of nourishment.

The use of aerial landscapes relates to the concept of our increasing disconnection from nature and our environment. The viewer floats above the landscape and is not part of it; they can become involved visually but are not connected by point of view. I want to increase the viewer’s desire to become involved by using more tactile, textural materials and create a visually lush surface. I want to continue to cultivate my work with that concept in mind so that I can develop a body of work that relates not only on a personal and autobiographical level but a relevant social and ecological one.