Mary Reid Kelley’s paintings and drawings of constructed environments are visual queries into who controls the images, objects, and texts of history.  Memorabilia from the American Civil War are the inspirational fodder for Reid Kelley’s re-enactments.  Details from 19th-century visual culture infuse the dolls and scenes that the artist fabricates, photographs, and then re-creates in paint and graphite.  For the artist, “The second-handness of the construction process makes it easier to address themes that I feel otherwise unqualified to address directly:  war, heroism, tensions of race and class.”  The pictorial narratives that Reid Kelley illustrates are simultaneously imaginative and historical, personal and collective. 

Reid Kelley, a graduate of St. Olaf College, has been featured in solo and group exhibitions in the Twin Cities, Rochester, and Northfield.