Michelle M. Kelly

Courses

• Spring 2024
• Summer 2024

Personal Statement

Teaching

Michelle Kelly came to North Seattle College in 1998 after teaching studio art and art history at St. John's University in Queens, NY. She was invited to teach at St. John's the same month she completed her MFA at Hunter College. Michelle teaches painting & drawing fall, winter, spring and most summer terms in North Seattle's AFA & CFA degree program https://northseattle.edu/programs/art.

What is at the heart of an art class with Professor Kelly? Revealing how art is created through process, using a variety of skills and techniques that can be learned. College classes are often the first time students encounter how working artists actually make art. Even if they took art classes in K-12.

This was the case for Professor Kelly up to her senior year of college. It never occurred to her that she could be a fine artist. She had considered working as a designer in high school but that hadn't been possible in her situation. As a senior philosophy major she secretly took 2D Design. It was her first taste of how painters use color. Even with cheap poster paints on cardboard, it was enough. As a mentor artist later said "we become artists because we need to".

There are intimidating myths about artists and art making which cause us to think that being an artist is special, only for specially talented people. One is that artists can naturally draw or paint or sculpt and be creative. Artists are different from everyone else - they either have the gift or they don't. That's not true! Most people learn how to draw and paint, and everyone has to learn how to more fully use visual tools and visual thinking to communicate through their art.

Another common art myth is that when artists create they begin with a finished image of the work in their heads. No, almost no one works that way. Art emerges gradually. It begins as a feeling, color idea, a glimpse of a composition, or something the artist wants to say about life or the world.  Slowly a piece takes on a concrete visual form. The work keeps changing to visually and conceptually express what the artist is seeking to say.

Revisions make it possible for artists to make successful work. Colors are changed, things are added and subtracted. The artist takes a break from the piece to see it more clearly. There are moments of frustration - no matter what level of practice you are at.  When is a piece of art finished? That can be a visual question - or a content question. Does it look right? Balanced? Harmonious? If they show the work to other people are viewers responding as they expected? If not is that ok? Does the piece tell the story the artist hoped to tell?

How do we learn to take a vague idea and make art from it? How do we keep doing it when art classes are over and school is done? Process, Patience, Practice.

Engage in and learn artmaking processes - these are a framework you can return to whenever you begin and are working on a piece. A good process knits together skills, techniques, questions and ideas - it guides you through the work. Practice with materials to understand how you want to use them. Share work with others, in formal critiques and more casual ongoing discussions to understand it more deeply - and gain insight into what you can do next. Give yourself time. Art is physical work which requires good chunks of time to develop and complete. Your investment in art-making is always revealed through the work.

In Professor Kelly's drawing and painting classes you have the opportunity to learn the tools, ideas and processes that artist use so that you can develop and deepen your art practice.

2023

Bio

Michelle Kelly was born in Boston and grew up in New England and Canada.

She has exhibited in Seattle, New York and Philadelphia. Her work has been reviewed in the Seattle Times, the Seattle P-I, New York Newsday and the New York Times.

Michelle has received awards that include a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, the Hecksher Museum Award, and she was a finalist for the Betty Bowen Award. She was one of the top ten artists out of 700 in Mass Exposure at Art Initiatives in Manhattan, received a grant from Robert Rauschenberg’s Change Foundation, and an Exemplary Teaching Award from the Washington Community Colleges Humanities Association.

Paintings & drawings in public and private collections include; the Seattle Art Museum (gift of Sarah Anne & Werner Kramarsky), the Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, NC, the Washington Consortium for the Arts (housed at Washington State University), Harborview/University of WA Medical Center - 400 Broadway Lobby, The Adecco Corporation, IDS Financial Services - American Express, William & Karen Lauder & Barbara Courtney. 

Degrees & Certificates

MFA, Hunter College, CUNY, New York. BFA, magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, University of Washington, Seattle.