Why wire? I ask myself this often, especially if I am working on a challenging or complicated piece. When I first created the "tiny orchestra" I needed something tangible. Drawing and painting just didn’t satisfy me. I needed to create something to hold in my hand. The next thing I knew, I was holding a piece of wire and a pair of pliers. Now, as Alexander Calder once said in an interview, "I never leave home without them!
I live and work in Cambridge, Massachusetts and have been here since 1983 when I moved from Southern Illinois in pursuit of happiness. So far, that pursuit has been successful, although I sometimes find myself talking with a southern accent and missing the corn fields and southern hospitality.
My roots and my universe extend from Southern Illinois where I was born and raised, and enriched by family now living in Iowa and Missouri, Florida and Southern Texas, and across the Atlantic in Nice, France.
Learning is something I will never get tired of and I am usually enrolled in a class or two at Harvard University. I am also a sometime student of Longy School of Music where I study classical guitar.
"How did you get started?" is a question an artist often hears. My story began one semester back in 1982 when I was taking a course in acoustics of music and an art and design course at Southern Illinois University.
In the music class, we explored the physics in respect to sound of everything from trombones to stereo speakers. The professor brought in a jazz band, a small chamber orchestra, and had several other live performances for our instruction and entertainment. I don’t think I had ever seen a live violin performance, and if I had, I wasn’t paying attention! I fell in love with the beauty of the instruments and when they all played in precision, I was on the edge of my seat.
In the art and design course we learned the fundamentals of design and sculpture. Looking ahead at the syllabus, I realized that a mid- semester project involved the human form in wire. I thought of what I had seen in the music class and ideas began to explode in my head. The tiny orchestra, little stick figures made of wire, playing tiny wire instruments, was born shortly thereafter.
I went to the hardware store and bought steel wire, brass paint, and anything else I thought would help me accomplish the task.
One evening, my three year old daughter decided I should pay her a bit more attention, and proceeded to stomp the "little guys" with her tiny feet.
We all survived, however, and the tiny orchestra was a great success. My professor took photographs and had the work displayed in the Art Building at SIU for several months. My "little guys" (and now women!) have led an enchanted, serendipitous life ever since!
One year, I was commissioned by the Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra to do a piece for Yo Yo Ma to be presented to him at a concert. Then, I created a clarinetist for Professor William Lipscomb, Nobel Prize Laureate. The Harvard Chemistry Department presented the clarinet player, under a bell jar, to Professor Lipscomb at a dinner party in honor of his 70th birthday.
A commitment to my art, and the constant practice that goes with it, is producing some wonderful results. I perceive an evolutionary process and when I look back to my first creation twenty years ago, I am reminded of prehistoric man!
I listen to the music of the instrument I am creating and have come to treasure the performances of musicians such as Nathan Milstein, Herbie Mann, and Pat Matheny, just to name a few. There is always some time for Janis Joplin, though, and I love her version of Summertime. All I need to do now is get that into wire!
Karen Kelley, 1999