KELLY O’DELL: TRANSIENT (H)OURS

Exhibition Dates: July 1 - September 24, 2017
Reception Date: Saturday, July 1, 2017 - 2pm
Free Artist Talk: July 30, 2017 - 1pm

Catch, then, O catch the transient hour;
Improve each moment as it flies;
Life’s a short summer—man a flower—
He dies—alas! how soon he dies!

-Samuel Johnson (1709 - 1784)

This Summer, the Museum of Northwest Art welcomes Kelly O’Dell’s work to the Benaroya Glass Gallery. Transient (h)ours utilizes the fragility of glass to explore the fragility of earth and all that live upon it. Fascinated with death and the rebirth of the seasons, the inevitability of mortality and fossils of the past, which are looked to for answers for our future, O’Dell pivots around the constant theme of “Memento Mori” (remember that you have to die).

Steeped in concerns of climate change, habitat destruction and man’s influence on our planet, O’Dell’s piece, Critical Masse mounts translucent ghost-like animal heads to expose the loss inherent if humans cannot find a way to stop the destruction they are facilitating. The continued reality of mass species extinction, as well as man’s potential path to self-induced extinction, can all be stopped O’Dell hopes if we heed science, change our daily lives and learn ways to tread more lightly on this shared planet.