We recently connected with Kelley Pettibone and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Kelley, thanks for joining us today. Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?

While attending my undergrad degree I experienced the losses of my biological father, my adoptive father, my mother, and my maternal grandparents. As an only child I was left feeling overwhelmed, orphaned, and homeless. In addition to having to maintain my workload at school I had been assigned enormous decisions to make regarding responsibilities that had now become mine. Most days were a struggle to find the energy to want to go to engage in anything and I became uninspired to create. As you can imagine, during a time when I needed to be planning a BFA exhibition and preparing to begin graduate school this was not conducive to a successful completion of my degree or a great experience in kicking off my journey into a MFA degree. During this time I spent a lot of time in my home studio sitting in the floor crying, not creating, just crying. One day, surrounded by piles of blank papers, dry brushes, paints, and blank canvases my muse returned from her extended vacation. I decided to turn my grief into art. I began to turn my studio into my healing space. My work has become the visual documentation of my journey through grief.
While attending graduate school, I sold my mother’s home. I moved most of my mother’s belongings into my home where they remained piled up for a couple of years until I became motivated to begin sorting through it all. My mother loved shopping for clothes and had four closets full of clothes when she passed away. Unfortunately she and I were not the same size. As a printmaker, one of the most expensive materials needed for pulling an edition of prints is the paper. One day while pursuing Instagram I had found myself down a rabbit hole watching videos of Japanese paper being made by hand. I then began to watch videos of other papermakers making different types of paper with various types of materials, from dryer lent to tree bark. The suddenly, I had an epiphany to use my mother’s clothing to make paper. I sorted the clothing using only the cotton clothing for making paper. I also sorted the clothing to separate the denim to use to make paper with only denim at a later date. I cut the clothing, removing the garment labels and seams, into 1 inch squares. This was a lesson in learning to make decisions to not hold onto every single thing just because it belonged to someone I loved. This alone was a very important milestone in my healing journey. I used a Hollander beater to pulp the clothing. This pulping process became a 3 day event as it was much more involved than I had anticipated. When pulping fiber, the process requires physical involvement while pulping to manipulate the fiber through the beater. During the 3 days of pulping I wrote a lot while I was not assisting the fiber through the beater. While pulping I could smell my mother’s perfume and Tide laundry detergent as the fibers of her clothing began to break down and the water filled with iridescent bubbles. For the first time through all of this I smiled as I felt my mom through her scent. Her scent provided peace. After pulping the clothing I made a slurry and dipped a deckle and mold one at a time pulling sheets of paper and leaving them to dry in the sunlight. This made me consider, in awe, the notion of making old things new and repurposing things not useful to me into things that are useful for me. This project, which I titled, “My Mother’s Clothing”, became the gateway for the fusion of inherited family ephemera within my work. “My Mother’s Clothing” inspired my MFA thesis and exhibition, which was titled, “dwell”.
After making the paper with my mother’s clothing, I decided the paper was too interesting and pretty to be printed on or covered up in any kind of way and it, in and of itself, became a series of works. Currently, I am planning to make paper using denim that once belonged to four generations of family members.

Kelley, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I work as an instructor at the School of Visual Art and Design at the University of South Carolina. Currently, I am teaching drawing and printmaking. I am a working artist and have shown my work throughout South Carolina since 2018. I practice in my home studio, which is a cozy studio apartment nestled above a detached two-car garage at my home. I live in the Lake Murray area of Columbia with my husband, our daughter, and two fur pups. I am a multidisciplinary artist but printmaking is the primary process within my practice. Woodcut relief and Collagraph printmaking, in particular, are my favorite printmaking processes. I enjoy mixed media collage, painting, sculpture, assemblage, and paper making. I am advocate for the positive relationship between creativity and improved mental health.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

Being an artist, or creative, is a unique gift in that we are given a continual space in which we can use as a sanctuary to explore, or investigate, ourselves and our emotional flux. Without having to say a word we can resolve questions or heavy emotions within ourselves and self-heal. This is a remarkable gift! I have found that I am most happy when I allow myself time in my studio to play and create. When life gets busy and I am without this time to spend in my studio there is a definite shift of energy that stirs within me, like a beacon my studio calls louder and louder until I am able to play and create again. Creative practice keeps me grounded in the midst of the distracting world around me and keeps me in tune with myself, which also helps me to remain in tune with others.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

I had to learn to allow myself to play again. As children we play but as we grow we are taught to play less. Playfulness is discouraged. As an artist, or creative, much learning about materials, media, and their interactions is learned through playfulness. When I remember art classes I had as a child and adolescent, they are all very structured memories of drawing with a gridded square or creating work within a prompted queue of ideas within a very rigid, particular method of mass productivity. Nothing resonates as highly original or profound, or entirely memorable, except a clay taco I once made at school as a gift for my Mom (which I found in my mom’s attic in a box after she passed away!). It’s a shame that we have to learn how to play when we become adults, or that we feel as if we are not behaving as we should when we do allow ourselves to become playful. Some of my favorite work has been the result of my learning to not try to harness its outcome but rather to release control over what I want it to be and allow it to become what it wants to be.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.kelleypettibone.com
• Instagram: @kelleypettiboneartist, @kelleypettibonestudio