Green Drinks (monthly enviro networking meetup) is this Wednesday @7:30p!

Kelly M O’Brien is a visual artist who lives and works in the Hudson Valley. She recently completed a 5-month artist residency in Woodstock at Byrdcliffe Art Colony, one of the oldest residency programs in the US, founded in 1902 as a textbook vision of a utopian arts colony.’ Prior to Byrdcliffe, Kelly lived overseas for 12 years in the UK and Germany.

Kelly makes mainly sculpture, exploring themes of care and repair related to climate change and biodiversity. Interest in developing a more sustainable practice led her to biomaterials which are mostly plant-based and biodegradable. Her current work collaborates with nature, including wildlife and plant life. Inspired by the remedial properties of mycelium (fungi roots), she investigates its potential through materiality and form.

Empathy for nature and human impact on the natural world underpin Kelly’s work.

She uses her practice to explore hopeful flourishing. Beyond studio and gallery, where can this work engage in a praxis of care? How might we foster a web of care for land, people, and creatures?

For this month’s Green Drinks Ossining, Kelly will join us in an ‘ecotopia conversation’ inspired by Ernest Callenbach’s 1975 novel Ecotopia and her Byrdcliffe Residency. She will bring samples of the innovative biomaterials used in her work and resources that inspire her practice.

And on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kellyobrienart/