Kyle Kellams: Beginning tonight, you can acquaint yourself with the art of Harold Keller. Keller’s name isn’t the most familiar, not even in Arkansas, where he spent time as an educator and artist. The new exhibition, Harold Keller: Portals, opens tonight at the Alexander Gallery on West Avenue in Fayetteville.
Guest curator of the exhibition, Matthew Bailey, says despite a prolific career split between here and New York, not many of us know that much about his work.
Matthew Bailey: Nobody knows anything about him other than probably some folks in the region who have some of his works, and they collected them back in the 50s and 60s when he was here. They still probably don’t know much about him. He’s got a really fascinating body of work. He had a huge influence as an artist, as a professor at the University of Arkansas Fort Smith. But he’s very much forgotten since he moved back to upstate New York, or New York City and upstate New York, in 1962.
Kellams: Keller was born in Brooklyn in 1928, earned his bachelor’s in art and philosophy from the University of Arkansas in 1949, and met his wife, June, in Fayetteville. He taught at high schools in Ozark, Alma and Van Buren in the 1950s. From 1956 through 1962, he taught at what was then called Fort Smith Junior College, earning his master’s from New York University in 1961. By the mid-1960s, he had moved back to his home state.
He infused his art, either on canvas or through ceramics, with whimsy and a sometimes messianic view of spirituality. The bio on a web page dedicated to his life includes this description:
“His early work was influenced by his Jewish upbringing, the humor of Saul Steinberg, the paintings of Paul Klee, German graphic arts of the late 15th century, Jewish mysticism, Christian symbolism and a penchant for classical themes such as the Birth of Venus.”
Matthew Bailey, who is now director and curator at the Wichita Falls Museum of Art at Midwestern State University in Wichita Falls, Texas, was an assistant professor of art at UAFS before his current job. He says. Keller’s art, much of it included in the UAFS collection, can straddle the approaches of abstract and precision.
Bailey: Yeah, meticulous. Detailed. Very, very whimsical. Satiric, but not overly so. Very, very thoughtful, very erudite. It’s very learned, and everything is just well thought out in terms of composition, color, line, all of it exquisite and all based on really, really keen observation of the world around him visually, socially, culturally, philosophically. And for me, they’re all puzzle pieces in different ways that really pull us in and just invite people to investigate them and to decipher them and to really figure out exactly what’s going on.
Kellams: The exhibition opening in Fayetteville tonight contains the word portals, as if to suggest Keller’s images of figures, saints, buildings or landscapes, often adjusted from reality to fantasy, can take us to other places that we hadn’t thought of.
Bailey: In “Portals”, I borrowed from a friend of the family who, a long time ago, referred to his work as portals. It’s not a term that he himself used, but I think he very much would agree. I think you’re exactly right. They take us to different places and places that we might want to go or might not want to go, and I think that’s the best part about them. They pull us in and transport us in one way or the other. And I apply the art historical category of magical realism to his work. It’s not something I don’t think he ever thought of or applied to his work as well, but it very much can be categorized like that. And it’s a very, very broad art historical category that applies to work that fuses the fantastic and the everyday in ways that do transport us to other realms, but still reflect our reality in some way, visually, culturally.
Kellams: This exhibition includes a mix of paintings, drawings, finished and unfinished, some never before seen outside of his studio or a private collection. There is also an entire wall of working drawings.
Bailey: These are drawings that were sketches that are used in the making of his finished drawings and paintings, so you have a nice insight into his working processes. I divided the exhibition into four different categories with text about the different phases of his artistic career, and it just so happens that his different phases, his stylistic interests, change basically from decade to decade. And he also produced artist’s books as well with his wife, June Keller. So he would make the drawings, and then he would make prints from those drawings. And his wife June would then bind those prints together to make books.
Kellams: Matthew Bailey says the exhibition places Keller’s work into its place and time while discussing his life in Arkansas and after. He says the assembled work can help people suss out where the imagery comes from and leaves ultimate decisions of what exactly is happening in each work to the viewer.
Harold Keller: Portals opens tonight in the Alexander Gallery at the Porter Art Warehouse on West Avenue and will remain on exhibit through March 8. Tonight’s opening reception is free but does require reserved spots for timed entry at 6, 6:30, 7 or 7:30. For more information, waltonartscenter.org.
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