a retrospective

Michael kelly williams

curated by carl e. hazlewood

For the past four decades Michael Kelly Williams has created sculptures, works on paper, and prints. This partial retrospective at FiveMyles highlights sculpture and painting.
Williams' sculptures are assembled with found objects. Elements are attached to one another using a gradual building up of layers of adhesives, wire, thin metal sheets and shrink wrap sleeps. Williams’ passion for Black improvisational music inevitably informs the artist’s sculptures. In The Mingus Songbook the iron base resembles the ironwork created by blacksmiths during slavery; the added open French horn case becomes the majestic music stand for one of America’s greatest composers, and the antique horn amplifier resonates with Eric Dolphy’s bass clarinet solo and gestures like a clenched fist.

Williams’ love of music is apparent in all his sculptures. With Shout, a seven foot assemblage centered on a trombone, he celebrates the awe and spiritual power of the trombone shout bands. Xenogenesis, composed with elements collected over a long period of time, was finally assembled in 2016. It includes wood carvings from the facade of the famous jazz club The Tin Palace that closed in 1979.

Several ceramic pieces from the 1970's and some which were recently created, are included in the exhibition. Mother and Child is a sculpture in stoneware that is heavily influenced by the artist’s interest in the imagery of the Ukioye tradition of Japan. The raku piece Cosmic Cowboy takes its inspiration from Ishmael Reed’s poem I’m a Cowboy in the Boat of Ra.

about the artist:

Michael Kelly Williams received a B.F.A. from the University of Michigan and an M.F.A. from Brooklyn College. He also attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Williams has had residencies at The Studio Museum in Harlem, Materials for the Arts in Long Island City, and Wave Hill in the Bronx. He received the first Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop Legacy Publishing Fellowship at the Elizabeth Foundation and was awarded a Pollock-Krasner Grant. His work can be found in several museums and institutions, such as The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York; The Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.; The Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI; and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Williams has been commissioned for various permanent installations, including two mosaic murals located at the Intervale Subway Station (2/5) in the Bronx as well as several glass murals in P.S. 82 Hammond School in Queens, New York. His work has been exhibited in China, Morocco, Canada, India and Japan.

GALLERY HOURS:

Thursday - Sunday, 1 - 6pm, or by appointment. Please email hanne@fivemyles.org, or call 718-783-4438.

DIRECTIONS:

Take 2, 3, or 4 trains to Franklin Avenue. Walk two blocks against the traffic on Franklin. Walk ¾ block to 558 St. Johns Place. FiveMyles is within easy walking distance from the Brooklyn Museum.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:

FiveMyles is in part supported by the New York State Council for the Arts, Public Funds from the New York City Dept. of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, Council Member Laurie Cumbo, The Jacques and Natasha Gelman Foundation, the Shelley and Donald Rubin Foundation, the Perlemeter Foundation, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the Joseph Robert Foundation, and the William Talbott Hillman Foundation.