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Reflecting his appreciation of the adjacent Farmers’ Museum’s one-room schoolhouse and its blacksmith’s shop, he decided to carve a blacksmith and a “schoolmarm”. His biggest sculptures to date, he considered their respective roles to be the most important in a farming town of the late 19th century. Many large and vaguely portrait-based figure sculptures followed. Manifesting his conventional values and conservative upbringing, archetypes prevail among Kelley’s human figures. Frontal, stiff, severe, and usually thin, Kelley's sculptures of men and women are notably different in appearance and manner than the stockier and less imposing male farmers and loggers in his earlier drawings.
Exhibition History“Folk Art from the Collection of the New York State Historical Association,” Museum of American Folk Art, NY, January 11, 2000 – February 18, 2000.
BibliographyBarbara Wahl Kaufman, "A Sampling of Folk Art", exhibition catalogue, Seton Hall University, South Orange, NJ, 1993, pg. 46 .
Bishop, Robert and Jacqueline M. Atkins, "Folk Art in American Life,"New York: Penguin Books, 1995.
Artist
Lavern Kelley
(1928 - 1998)
Schoolmarm
Date1988
MediumWood, pine, paint
DimensionsOverall: 31 × 7 1/2 in. (78.7 × 19.1 cm)
Object numberN0003.1988
Credit LineCollection of the Fenimore Art Museum. Museum Purchase
Photograph by Richard Walker
Label TextKelley’s talent received important recognition in 1987 when he was commissioned by the New York State Historical Association to make these two figures for the Fenimore Art Museum. He was the first folk artist to be commissioned to create work for the Museum’s collection. Reflecting his appreciation of the adjacent Farmers’ Museum’s one-room schoolhouse and its blacksmith’s shop, he decided to carve a blacksmith and a “schoolmarm”. His biggest sculptures to date, he considered their respective roles to be the most important in a farming town of the late 19th century. Many large and vaguely portrait-based figure sculptures followed. Manifesting his conventional values and conservative upbringing, archetypes prevail among Kelley’s human figures. Frontal, stiff, severe, and usually thin, Kelley's sculptures of men and women are notably different in appearance and manner than the stockier and less imposing male farmers and loggers in his earlier drawings.
Exhibition History“Folk Art from the Collection of the New York State Historical Association,” Museum of American Folk Art, NY, January 11, 2000 – February 18, 2000.
BibliographyBarbara Wahl Kaufman, "A Sampling of Folk Art", exhibition catalogue, Seton Hall University, South Orange, NJ, 1993, pg. 46 .
Bishop, Robert and Jacqueline M. Atkins, "Folk Art in American Life,"New York: Penguin Books, 1995.
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