Artist Statement

Kelly Moran was born in the Catskill Mountains of New York. On the day Woodstock opened her family loaded up their powder blue ford station wagon and moved to Florida. She always wanted to be an artist. On the streets of Fleischmanns New York she tried selling her twig collages at a tender age of 6. The same streets that the comedian Milton Berle and other entertainers from NYC walked down many years prior. In Florida Kelly started her art education by studying velvet Painting at the Woolworths she and her grandmother frequented. Kelly has an AS degree from Florida School of the Arts and a BFA in painting from Louisiana Tech University, studied ceramics at University of Houston Graduate program. She worked at Little Egypt Enterprises, a collaborative print and ceramic studio 1984-86. After Little Egypt Enterprises she created a studio in Midland Texas 1986-89 and married her college sweetheart in Big Bend National Park. The next studio was in Frenchtown New Jersey 1989-9 a small Victorian village. She showed work in New York City at Gallery Henoch and Sandy Webster Gallery in Philadelphia. 1995-97 she lived in Jakarta Indonesia where she traveled, studied indigenous textiles and ceramics. During her time in Indonesia, she was invited to speak about her work at an Australian ceramic conference. At the end of her stay in Indonesia she rode a bicycle with no breaks down a volcano, visited Toajaland on the Island of Sulawesi where they have houses that look like boats, and visited Komodo Island where they have actual dragons. She unknowingly was pregnant. Upon returning to the states, she and her husband landed in Dallas for three years. Kelly, with her family, returned to Houston in 2000. Moran was associate director of Texas Collaborative 2005-2011, a place where National and international artists collaborated to produce prints. Kelly has shown her work at galleries in Houston, Dallas, Galveston, and New Orleans, Houston Art Fair, NYC Outsider Art Fair along with national and international group shows. She taught Printmaking at the High School for Performing and Visual arts 2011 to 2016. In 2017 Kelly was invited to a residency program in Hilmsen Germany where she created prints and had a show of her work at Monchskirche, a 13th century church in Salzwedel Germany. Her work is in many private and museum collections such as the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston TX., New Orleans Museum of Art, The Contemporary Museum of Plainview, Plainview TX. Moran presently has a studio in Houston Heights. She occasionally collaborates on prints with artists. Her past training in painting, ceramics and printmaking has contributed to her love of craftsmanship and process-oriented work. She draws on contemporary events, personal life, and intuition to compose her well-crafted, quirky universal prints and collage assemblages.

I collect paper dolls and use them in my art. I did not collect them as a kid. I had barbies. I am not sure how it began. It became an obsession. From the 1930’s to 1950’s, paper dolls experienced a golden era, as paper proved affordable during the depression and remained available in WWII’s ration economy. This time period is the bulk of my collection. Some of the paper is very delicate and therefore I decided to copy and enlarge the clothes, and then build a story around them. I use only the clothes with the tabs to leave the narrative open. The background collage is a heavier, more durable vintage paper from around the same period as the paper dolls. It consists of vintage wallpaper, decorative end sheets of encyclopedias, maps, vintage advertisements, etc. The paper is treated with a uv protective varnish. Cracker jack toys, watch parts and repurposed well-loved objects are embedded in the works. Trolling estate sales and eBay prove to be a rich source of art materials. I have collected these things for years knowing one day I will use them. My studio is full of materials, and I go on a treasure hunt to find the parts I need for each narrative.

If I were an appliance, I would be a toaster because it makes warm, comforting, crunchy toast.

Education

1979 Florida School of the Arts, Palatka, Florida

1982 B.F.A., Louisiana Tech University, Ruston, Louisiana

1983 – 1984 University of Houston Graduate Studies, Houston, Texas

1984 – 86 Apprenticeship Little Egypt Enterprises, Houston, Texas

1995 – 97 Chinese ceramics, indigenous ceramics and indigenous textiles, Jakarta, Indonesia

Selected Solo and Dual Exhibitions

2022 kut-up kut-out koelsch gallery, Houston, Texas

2020 Love Is All You Need koelsch gallery, Houston Texas

2019 Urban Animals Mystic Lyon, Houston, Texas

Two Person Show Koelsch Gallery, Houston, Texas

2017 Fairy Tales Monchskirche Gallery, Salzwedel Germany

2016 Nos Cave Vin, Houston, Texas

Entanglement University of the Ozarks, Clarksville, Arkansas

2015 Only Human, D.M.Allison Art, Houston Texas

2014 Kelly Moran, D.M. Allison Art, Houston, Texas

2012 Beg, Borrow and Steal, D.M. Allison Art, Houston, Texas

KA-Pow Wow Wagner, Sousa, Galveston, Texas

2011 American Dreamer, Nau-haus, Houston, Texas

Kelly Moran, Bogan Gallery, Galveston, Texas

2010 Amistad III, Cultural Center, Arequipa, Peru

American Printmakers, Dishman Museum, Lamar University Beaumont, Texas

Houston-Dallas Smackdown, El Centro College, Dallas, Texas

Wallpaper, Fort Worth Community Art Center, Fort Worth, Texas

2008 Kelly Moran/Bette Ward, koelsch gallery, Houston, Texas

Pathway Deluge: Kelly Moran / Kate Rivers, Mighty Fine Arts, Dallas, Texas

2007 Featured Artist: Gallery 404b, Hot Springs, Arkansas

2006 Catastrophic Survival, Texas Collaborative, Houston, Texas

Selected Group Exhibitions

2023 Texas Art Exchange Border Run, Museum of Fine Arts Brownsville, Texas

Print Austin, Print Expo, Austin, Texas

It Came From the Bayou, Houston, Texas

Think Ink: Print Houston Members, LHUCA, Lubbock Texas

2022 Texas Two Steppers, K Space, Corpus Cristi, Texas

PAPER, Contemporary Art Museum of Plainview, Plainview, Texas

2021 Think Ink: PrintMatters Membership, koelsch gallery, Houston,

Print Austin, Tienmann Gallery Round Rock, Texas

Ink Only III, Durbin Gallery, Birmingham Southern College, Birmingham Alabama

2020 Think Ink: PrintMatters Membership, koelsch gallery, Houston, Texas

Print Austin, Tienmann Gallery, Round Rock, Texas

2019 Prints & Ceramics Little Egypt, Glassell School of Art, MFAH, Houston, Texas

2017 Big Art in a Small Town, Contemporary Art Museum Plainview, Plainview Texas

Trump This, Art Car Museum, Houston, Texas

2015 Big Show, Lawndale Art Center, Houston Texas

Known and Unknown, One Allen Center Gallery Houston, Texas

SNAP/Print Matters portfolio exchange, Galveston Art Center, Galveston, Texas

Assistance League of Houston, Williams Tower, Houston, Texas

2014 Flatbed Press: Print Fair, Austin, Texas

2014 Gun Show, Art Car Museum, Houston, Texas

2013 Gun Show, Art Car Museum, Houston, Texas

2012 Houston Ink Art Fair, Rice University Media Center, Houston, TX, Houston

2011 Print Matters Traveling Exhibit, Print History Museum Houston, Washington, DC

2009 Texas Green, Art Car Museum, Houston, Texas

Texas Twang, Shift Gallery, Seattle, Washington

2008 JFK-45 years on, El Centro College, Dallas, Texas

2007 Beyond Printmaking, Texas Tech, Lubbock, Texas

2007 Delta National Small Prints Exhibition, Bradbury Gallery Arkansas State University 2007 Houston Municipal Commission on the Arts, City Hall, Houston Texas

2006 Houston Municipal Commission on the Arts, City Hall, Houston Texas

2005 Houston Municipal Commission on the Arts, City Hall, Houston Texas

New Orleans Print Triennial, NOMA, New Orleans, Louisiana

Counterpoint, Hill Country Arts Foundation, Ingram, Texas

Capital States, Berings and James Gallery, Houston, Texas

Dishman Competition, Lamar University, Beaumont, Texas

22 Juried Opening Exhibition, 1600 Smith, Houston, Texas

2003 Houston Motifs, Lubbock Art Center, Lubbock, Texas

Private and Public Collections

Florida Gulf Coast University

New Orleans Museum of Art

Museum of Fine arts Houston, TX

Atlantic Richfield

Capitol One, Houston

Gerald White Salon

Dr. Carolyn Farb

Francine Crane

Gus and Sharon Kopriva

Dr. Donald Bacigalupi

Dr. Tom Bevalaqua

Marilyn Oshman

Nancy Kienholtz

Dr. Randy Hill

Brian Scrivner