Discipline: Interdisciplinary Art – performance

John Kelly

Discipline: Interdisciplinary Art – performance
Region: New York, NY
MacDowell Fellowships: 1994, 1997, 2011, 2012, 2015, 2018

John Kelly is a performance and visual artist. His character-driven dance theatre works focus on artists and social outsiders, and the nature of creative genius. His works have received a 2018 NEA Dance Grant, 2 NEA American Masterpieces Awards, 2 Bessie Awards; 2 Obie Awards; a CalArts Alpert Award, and fellowships from The American Academy in Rome, The Radcliffe Institute, The Guggenheim Foundation, The Sundance Theatre Institute, and a 2013 USA Artists Fellowship. In residence in 2018, Kelly completed a graphic novel A Friend Gave Me A Book. He also worked on a new performance Underneath The Skin, based on the life of Samuel Steward (1909-1993), poet, novelist, and university professor who left the world of academia to become a tattoo artist, writer of erotic fiction, and translator of the work of Jean Genet. Steward was also a collaborator with Alfred Kinsey at the Center for Sex Research, a close friend of Gertrude Stein, and lover of the playwright Thornton Wilder.

Studios

New Hampshire

John Kelly worked in the New Hampshire studio.

New Hampshire Studio, originally named Peterborough Studio, was given to MacDowell by Mr. and Mrs. William Schofield, Mrs. H. A. Chamberlain, Mrs. Andrew Draper, and Miss Ruth Cheney. The studio was renamed in 1943. The Gilbert Verney Foundation established an endowed maintenance fund in 1990, and a bequest in memory of MacDowell Fellow Victor Candell underwrote the…

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