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Spring Work Made Easy
Spring Work Made Easy
Artist (1928 - 1998)

Spring Work Made Easy

Date1990
DimensionsOverall: 6 × 22 1/4 × 9 1/4 in. (15.2 × 56.5 × 23.5 cm)
Object numberF0165.1991
Credit LineCollection of The Farmers' Museum. Museum Purchase
Photograph by Richard Walker
Label TextLavern Kelley was born in 1928 in Oneonta and has lived in the same family farmhouse his entire life. In 1935, while recovering from appendicitis, he received a pen knife as a gift and began carving. He initially carved vehicles, but added animals and human figures to his repertoire in the 1970s. Kelley created Spring Work Made Easy by working in front of the public during the summer of 1990, in a residency funded by a grant from the New York State Council on the Arts through Gallery 53 Artworks in Cooperstown. Like many of his multi-faceted works, this piece documents the disappearing lifestyle of the family farmer of upstate New York, and is drawn from a lifetime of first-hand experience.
Bibliography"Lavern Kelley: A Rural Life." Exhibition Catalog, Hamilton College, Clinton, NY, 1988.

Chuck and Jan Rosenak, "The M.A.F.A. Encyclopedia of 20th Century American Folk Art and Artists." NY: 1990. p. 171.
On View
On view
Early Morning Trot
Lavern Kelley
1989
Threshing Time
Lavern Kelley
1991
The Village Blacksmith
Lavern Kelley
1987
Feeding The Horse
Mattie Lou O'Kelley
n.d.
Ford 9000 (Log Truck)
Lavern Kelley
1990
Linn Tractor
Lavern Kelley
1990
Schoolmarm
Lavern Kelley
1988
Truckers Fleet, 1948
Lavern Kelley
1948
Untitled
Lavern Kelley
1938
Three Birds
William Edmondson
1932-1951
Untitled (Cat)
Lavern Kelley
n.d.

5798 STATE HIGHWAY 80
COOPERSTOWN NY, 13326
607-547-1400

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