Heather Kerley Art

You never know what will open doors. I recently wrote about my precious antique mall finds and the inspiration they hold for me. That initial small marble painting created an exhibition opportunity that I had not been actively seeking, but I’m grateful for in this week after Thanksgiving. The show, Holiday Anthology, will be at Full Circle Gallery in Fort Walton Beach, Florida, opening this weekend. I’m very excited because I love the other artists in the show and I can’t wait to see their new work alongside mine!

For this group of paintings, I happily followed my original train of thought, which I seem to return to again and again, that these small objects hold traces of meaning both personal and cultural. The result was a “Curio Cabinet” of rare and remarkable treasures including marbles, fishing lures, and antique buttons. These tiny, easily-overlooked objects both remind us of people and things past – Grandma’s button jar or Dad’s tacklebox. I like to think that the nostalgia they represent is the entrypoint, but that I unmoor them from those meanings to create something new, as if we were looking at them for the first time.