Patch Blog: Mike Kelley Foundation Donates $1,000 To Library

Internationally-known conceptual artist Kelley’s passing was front page news in the Los Angeles Times and written about by journalists and art critics around the world.

An impromptu, , where hundreds of stuffed animals were left by fans and associates. Some of Kelley’s most famous sculptures and installations featured herds of stuffed animals that he had purchased at thrift stores.

Some originally interpreted Kelley’s stuffed animal installations as commentaries on child abuse, while Kelley himself later confided that he was commenting on commodity culture. To some it also seemed that Kelley’s tough childhood in Detroit, Michigan had exerted its influence on his stuffed animal artwork.

Mike Kelley was born in 1954 in a working class area of Detroit. His mother was employed in the Ford Motor Company cafeteria and his father worked as the head of maintenance for the local school system. Mike’s early years were spent in parochial school but he jumped to public school for junior high. Although his parents didn’t support it, from the time he was 13 he knew that he wanted to be an artist. In high school he was greatly influenced by two of his teachers, one of whom temporarily became like a surrogate father to him.

Kelley applied to the Art Institute of Chicago and CalArts in Valencia, the latter of which first brought him to Los Angeles. Unlike most of his peers he resisted a career-advancing move to New York. The LA Art Scene was exciting to Kelley and he became active as a painter, a writer, a video artist, a musician, and a performance artist. Kelley’s artworks are psychologically complex and many of them are even more controversial. At any rate, they are certainly not for everybody. Nevertheless, they put Kelley at the forefront of the contemporary art world.

Mike Kelley was a professor for Pasadena Art Center College of Design’s graduate program from the 1980s until around 2010. His works were exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art in LA a total of 7 times and hundreds of times in many of the world’s most prestigious art museums. In 2000 Kelley received the California Institute of the Arts Distinguished Alumnus Award and a Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in 2003.

Some of Kelley’s artworks sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars and more. In the months preceding Mike Kelley’s death he had returned from a London show and was installing a gallery show in Los Angeles based on the band he started in the 1970s, Destroy All Monsters. In an interview for a cover story entitled “Straight Outta Detroit: Mike Kelley Goes Full Circle” by Tulsa Kinney in the February-March 2012 issue of Artillery magazine, Kelley stated that he was no longer in the mood to make art, a statement that to some art aficionados was akin to Michael Jordan’s informing basketball fans that he was going to take a break from hoops to play minor league baseball. But unlike Jordan, who later returned to basketball, Kelley never returned to doing what had made him famous. Mike Kelley died on January 31, 2012.

In December 2011, The Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts made a $1,000 donation to the to improve the South Pasadena Public Library collection.

Half of the amount has been used to purchase 2011 Grammy®-winning and nominated CDs, , a three-time Grammy®-winning jazz pianist residing in South Pasadena, and three more by Kelley’s band, Destroy All Monsters. The other half of the donation will be used to buy new art books which will be ordered soon for the Library.

New CDs purchased for the Library with the donation:

• Monty Alexander, Harlem-Kingston Express Live
• Marsha Ambrosius, Late Nights & Early Mornings
• Gregg Allman, Low Country Blues
• Jeff Beck, Rock ‘N’ Roll Party for Les Paul
• Bela Fleck & the Flecktones, Rocket Science
• Billy Childs, Jazz Chamber Music Volume 1
• Billy Childs, Jazz Chamber Music Volume 2
• Tony Bennett, Duets II
• Bon Iver, (Self-Titled)
• Brian Setzer Orchestra – Instru-mental
• Terri Lyne Carrington, Mosaic
• Steven Curtis Chapman, Re:Creation
• Chicago Symphony Orchestra Brass, Live in Concert
• Civil Wars, Barton Hollow
• Harry Connick, Jr., In Concert on Broadway
• Ry Cooder, Pull Up Some Dust and Sit Down
• Death Cab for Cutie, Codes & Keys
• Destroy All Monsters, (Self Titled)
• Destroy All Monsters, Silver Wedding Anniversary
• Destroy All Monsters, Live In Tokyo
• Steve Earle, I’ll Never Get Out Of This World Alive
• Foster the People, Torches
• Emmylou Harris, Hard Bargain
• Levon Helm, Ramble at the Ryman
• Booker T. Jones, Road from Memphis
• Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Songs from a Zulu Farm
• Jim Lauderdale, Reason & Rhyme
• Seth MacFarlane, Music Is Better Than Words
• Ziggy Marley, Wild & Free
• Bruno Mars, Doo-Wops & Hooligans
• Pat Metheny, What’s It All About
• Rave On Buddy Holly – (Tribute Album with Paul McCartney, Patti Smith, The Black Keys, and many more).
• Sharon Isbin & Friends—Guitar Passions
• Blake Shelton, Red River Blue
• George Strait, Here for a Good Time
• Barbara Streisand, What Matters Most
• Trinity College Choir--Beyond All Mortal Dreams
• Roseanna Vitro, Music of Randy Newman