Artwork by Series

Artist in Residence 2009

Works completed during 8th Street AiR, an artist-in-residence program at the 8th Street Marketplace in downtown Boise, Idaho. The residency was from February to April 2009. I shared the space with poet Adrian Kien.

Rue Series

Works completed while I lived in Chambery France in 2007 and 2008. The pieces are small drawings on paper and my inspiration was my surroundings: French cityscapes from Paris to Grenoble, the French countryside and a little bit of Italy.

40 Saints

A collaboration of 40 drawings & poems, by Adrian Kien & Kelly Packer 2007 - 2008. Our process for this project was that I would complete a drawing and Adrian would use that as his point of departure for his poem. Together they form small prayer cards to the various saints of our choosing. Through these prayers we found access to certain strange areas between language and oil pastel rubbed over the finger. And like the meditative act of prayer - these pieces represent our communion with art and each other. The bones that make up our hands as we create will eventually decay into a powder and we will know no authority.

a body to improve the method of time

(2006-2007) A collaboration between Kelly Packer and Adrian Kien. In this project we are working in a loose fashion. We started with a theme centered around taxidermy and progressed independently outwards. They are drawings of animals in various fragmentary states, unfinished animals with styrofoam guts and limbs attached and wrapped with string. Layers of skin and cloth glimpse an underlying structure of wire and glue. This is about trying to hold on to life, recreating it with everyday materials. Piecing a life back together with twine, plaster and bones. It's not supposed to be pretty. But it is. A different kind of beauty. A terrifying beauty.

Monopoly

(2005) The monopoly paintings are based on a poem by Adrian Kien. For each stanza of the poem, I created a painting that incorporated those lines.

self-portraits

(2004 - present) This series deals self-portraiture in the context of contemporary abstraction. By elevating myself and those around me to saintly positions, I artificially grant us credibility, a higher status. We are all saints at certain moments of consciousness. Those instances where we see glimpses, as de Kooning says, "of something, encountered like a flash."

We may not be aware of these kairos moments between cups of coffee and clipping our toenails, but a world exists just at the edge of our consciousness. And this is the world I seek in these paintings - the moment before redemption when we feel all of our mortal weight.