ART Soft On Art Artists Kelly Gale Amen and John Plamer are featured in the Boyou City Art Festival by Anne H. Roberts

When one day designer Kelly Gale Amen was unable to find just the right pool-side accoutrement for a client, he sat down with a pencil and drew a simple bench. When fabricated, the bench launched a new artistic enterprise for Kelly: functional sculpture. The resulting bold, geometric consoles, tables, and chairs are cast in bronze, stainless steel, or iron and utilize a simple sculptural design which emphasizes the inherent beauty of the cast metal. The innovative furniture has been shown in museums and galleries in San Francisco, Boca Raton, Miami, Atlanta, and Houston. Triple bronze benches with fossil limestone tops are installed in the Houston Museum of Natural Science, and other designs provide seating in the Weiss Energy Hall there. And now, his and John Palmer’s "Bayou Catfish" tray sculpture is the featured artwork at the Bayou City Art Festival, appearing citywide on posters and T-shirts.

As an award-winning, nationally known designer, Kelly says he tries to develop in his clients a sense of adventure, an exchange and appreciation of beauty, style, and comfort. Since 1974, when he set up his own design studio, Kelly has been noted for a blending of bold color, elegance, experimentation, and, especially, the unexpected. Fueled by his infectious creativity, his eyes sparkling and wry grin breaking into a broad smile, your own companion ideas seem to flow effortlessly. In a similar manner, his own living/work space, the KGA Compound in Montrose, operates as a constantly changing, creative incubator for ideas.

In Kelly's collaboration with painter John Palmer, each plays off each other, each new idea grows another, a process of constant creativity. "Since I was very young, I have always drawn," John says, "but, I guess my creativity was being exercised in my landscape design business." However, in 1998, responding to a no longer ignorable urge, John stopped his truck at an art supply store and emerged with oils in primary colors, brushes and three canvases. He returned home to begin painting. "It felt good, it felt right," he explains.

As this new creativity consumed more time, and as he began exhibiting and selling his work at area restaurants, he abandoned his landscape business for the studio. Today, Palmer's oil paintings cover the walls of his residence within the KGA Compound, hanging from floor to ceiling. They are beautiful, mysterious abstractions with a feeling of landscape and are often in triptych. Bold strokes of primary colors appear within isolated areas of shaded, layered whites and grays. He explains that both color and the element of shifting change are his two inspirations. "If people do not react to the feeling in my paintings, then I've failed," John says.

It was during his initial period of exhibiting that John met Kelly, which eventually led to their friendship and designer-meets-artist collaboration which is creating such imaginative sculpture cum furniture. For example, Kelly explains how he came to develop their pouf ottoman: "I needed something interesting for a cat to sit on." These soft seating pieces feature unusual geometric shapes combined with rich patterned fabrics, animal prints, sumptuous velvets, fringes, cording, and brass tacks. Then John took it from there, adding a painted canvas special to each piece of soft furniture. The rectangles, squares, and triangle pillow shapes can be rearranged and reversed at the owner’s whim, creating a constantly changing artwork.

"Artists seeking interaction with the collector is magical for both," says John. A Zen-like energy where everything in one's surroundings relates and is in harmony with the laws of nature is evident in the outdoor/indoor arrangement of homes, studios, and offices which make up the KGA Compound and serves as a living backdrop for their art, individualism, and idiosyncrasy. This interactive experience will be available to all, as the KGA Compound will be recreated by Kelly and John within two large tents located near the entrance at Memorial Park.

As their dramatic, eyecatching entrance , "Wildflower Truck"–a transformed 1982 Silverado designed by Kelly for the Art Car Parade–will be capped by a suspended soft table, dramatically painted by John. 150 of John’s paintings will line the walls, interspersed with windows allowing views of the surrounding Memorial Park woods. "The Bayou Catfish" tabletop tray/table will be on hand.

The second tent will showcase new seven-foot-square soft canvases encased in mahogany and more cast metal and soft sculpture furniture. It is intended to embrace everyone who enters with a spirit of interactive creativity and play. Small soft sculpture pincushions and specially designed note cards picturing the collaborative work will be available for sale. Says Kelly: "I want everyone who likes it to be able to take some art home."

The Bayou City Arts Festival will run Fri.—Sun., March 23— 25, 10 a.m.—6 p.m. in Memorial Park. Charity partners include Bering Omega Community Services Foundation, Art League of Houston, Lawndale Art & Performance Center, MECA (Multicultural Education and Counseling Through the Arts), Downtown YMCA Youth and Urban Services, SNAP (Spay-Neuter Assistance Program), Texas Hearing and Service Dogs, Bristow Resource Center, Straightway, Steven’s House. To see more of Kelly and John’s work, visit their website at www.kga.net.

Anne H. Roberts is a Houston writer and photographer who was formerly editor of ArtScene.