Kelly Goff Portfolio
July 2019- January 2025
Dear Reviewer,
Thank you again for agreeing to do this work and for your expertise and insight, which I know will be invaluable to members of Wheaton’s Scholarship and Promotions Committee during their process and we are grateful. The following is a brief statement of context intended to situate my work of the last five years within a particular trajectory.
I was born and raised on the Caribbean island of Curaçao. From my rooftop, I could see the aquamarine ocean in one direction and equidistantly, a massive, smoggy oil refinery in another. The first twenty years of my art practice was primarily an investigation of contrasts. I was attracted at first by the striking effect of pairing visually incongruous materials like pink polystyrene with dark tree bark. This impulse evolved into a process-first practice in my twenties with an expanding palette of contrast that added the value of objects and materials (found and imposed), the labor I deployed, and changes of state through material transformation. In 2005 for instance, I made a forklift pallet from walnut wood and linseed oil–a portrait of a hierarchically-low object with value explored through atypical application of labor, materials, and context.
I came to understand my preoccupation with contrast more deeply as a kind of biographical inevitability, driven by poor-kid resentment and tenacity, by questions about my biracial identity, and with fascination and suspicion about the mysterious geopolitics, namely around oil production, that shaped me and continue to shape us. Through my late twenties and thirties, I leveraged my art practice as a means to look for answers. I looked in places where contrast was evident such as at an off-grid residency in Alaska where I developed a project about the wilderness and petroleum. I spent time in the Ecuadorian Amazon, thought to be the most biodiverse place on Earth, which however critical, is also under active oil exploration and extraction. The first few works in the following portfolio are informed by this line of inquiry and employ materials and iconography like ocean water, petroleum drill bits, and over-harvested rainforest lumber.
The pandemic hit during my first year as a tenured professor and I turned my focus toward an outdoor opportunity– a regional “art on the trails” exhibition held in a nature preserve. To participate, I found a load of crooked rusty pipes, and working in a friend’s backyard, I created two large sculptures by welding the pipes end-to-end like a continuous, intuitive doodle made in slow motion. Making these works felt like play to me. Exhibiting them outdoors and interacting with the public was fulfilling in a way that I hadn’t felt perhaps ever in my practice. It changed everything.
I made a plan to focus on public art exclusively for a while and for the last four years or so, I have been exploring a fairly simple idea of a line moving through space. During this time, I’ve been rapidly pursuing small to medium-sized public sculpture exhibition opportunities and commissions strategically with an eye on tackling more large-scale, large-budget municipal projects. As such, the majority of my CV and portfolio within the promotion review window represents work in a significant but relatively new chapter in my creative practice.
These works have allowed me to learn a lot about making art for public spaces in four years, especially about logistics, working with stakeholders within communities, and a bit about international sculpture biennials. While keeping a broad plan in mind, I continue to be voracious about materials and technology on a studio-level. I am interested in pushing the formal language (imagine for instance a sculptural line flowing across a public square, dipping underground and popping up here and there) as well as exploring novel material combinations such as working with a core of bundled bamboo strengthened by an aluminum open matrix-like exoskeleton.
For your convenience, please find a downloadable Curriculum Vitae here. Note that portions in light gray occurred before the scope of this review period.
With sincere thanks,
Kelly Goff