PSU Magazine Summer 1987

-----·PERSONALITY·----- ' ':East meets West by Katlin Smith A traditional cherry tree shades the garden of artist Daniel Kelly's tiny, 15-mat house in Kyoto, Japan. For part of each year, the PSU graduate resides in this peaceful place where "the city meets the mountains." During the rest of the year, Kelly ('71 MS) is surrounded by the concrete and traffic of New York City, living in a Greenwich Village duplex and working in a Soho loft studio. Kelly has been at home in two radically different cultures and art f traditions for the past 10 years. The result is art which is an intriguing blend of East and West, and an artist who is becoming recognized in both Japan and the U.S. • Born in Idaho Falls, Idaho, and raised in Great Falls, Montana, Kelly grew up far removed from Oriental culture. After earning an under– graduate degree in psychology from the University of Portland, he started his graduate work at PSU, studying visual perception with psychology pro– fessor Gerald Murch. Though immersed in his psychology studies, Kelly was drawn to art at PSU. "I think I always wanted to be an artist . . . but I think I had too much respect to major in art," Kelly remembers. "I thought you ought to be nearly Rembrandt if you were going to say to someone you wanted to be an artist. " PSU professor Ray Grimm became his mentor. "He took all my courses," says Grimm, who taught Kelly ceramics and then introduced him to glass blowing at the PSU Glass House, an experimental project funded by the National Endowment for the Arts. PSU alum Daniel Kelly's artwork reflects his dual life in Kyoto and New York City. After graduation, Kelly moved to San Francisco where he laid ceramic tile, his father's profession, to support himself. He studied drawing and painting at the Morton Levin Graphic Arts Workshop. A chance meeting with a Japanese tourist on a cable car led to an invitation to visit Kyoto. In Kyoto, Kelly met Tomikichiro Tokuriki, a wood block printing master, who invited him to undertake a six-day-per-week, seven-year appren– ticeship with him. Though traveling only on a short-term tourist visa, Kelly jumped at the chance to study with him. As a foreign er, the fledgling artist found real possibility for growth in Japan. ''I've had opportunities that it would take Japanese artists a long time to get," he says. From wood block printing, Kelly moved to intimate, watercolor land– scapes and paintings ofJapanese lanterns. He found a dual market - Japanese collectors bought his land– scapes and foreign buyers purchased the lanterns. (Katlin Smith is a Portland free-lance writer who was a regular contributor to PSU Perspective.) PSU MAGAZINE PAGE 19 But the American artist was troubled by the Japanese emphasis on conformity. Patrons would tell him that they liked his brighter, more individualistic pieces, but would buy a muted, more "acceptable" painting. After seven years in Japan , Kelly felt he was losing touch with his American values and started living part of the year in the U.S. The half-year he spends in New York is critical to his development as an artist, believes Kelly. "I personally believe that it's almost essential for an artist to live in New York," he says. "When you have this sort of visual communication with other artists, it gives you a great deal to measure your own work against." The reputation of this two-address artist continues to grow. He is be– coming "well-collected," says Susan Carter-Arcand of the Carter Arcand Gallery. She featured Kelly's work in a one-man show in her Northwest Port– land gallery in April. Kelly's work is now in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the British Continued on page 23