Kelly McKaig – Chicago, IL
Kelly McKaig is a multidisciplinary artist who resides in Chicago, Illinois. Originally from Ohio, she has been in
exhibitions in the Midwest as well as other parts of the United States and Europe. She has received grants from
the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and is currently preparing work for a group show at Beverly
Arts Center, curated by Sal Campbell of the Beverly Arts Alliance.
Using photographic archives, paint, natural dyes, and stitching, Kelly McKaig’s work explores memory, grief,
loss, nostalgia, generation, and repetition. Her photographic works from the 1980s and 1990s are drawn from
home movies transferred to video and then shot with a Polaroid 600 camera. In rephotographing the
Polaroids, she added additional “descendants” to the original image lineage to create large single C-prints
(analog chromogenic prints) that delve into and reflect on the relationships (visual and familial) in the original
home movies.
While “a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose” may have been true for Gertrude Stein, in McKaig’s work, a circle is
not a circle is not a circle. Each circle, or other repeated motif, is a variation on a theme and a new iteration
from the physical object it is printed from. Natural dyes, drawing, intricate stitching, rusty pieces of metal
(washers, saw blades, a chicken feeder cover, horseshoe, etc.), come together in fabric pieces that have an
aged, handmade feel.
During the pandemic, she began working in watercolor and is on a quest to develop a personal vocabulary in
that medium.
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