Finally. At long last, The New Yorker interviews John Kelly. He deserves a major profile, with pages of photos of his work, but luckily this Talk of the Town piece is by Ariel Levy who packs a lot of life into two columns. She nails the problem of being a brilliant polymath in a single-issue world:
But, given Kelly's thirty-year career as a painter, opera singer, actor, fashion illustrator, tightrope walker, musician, and ballet dancer, it's also easy to understand his mild frustration at being reduced to a cross-dresser who "does" Joni.
And:
Having so many different vocations, he fears, makes him invisible. "It's not lauded, it's suspect," he says. "Connecting the dots, that's the challenge for an aesthetic octopus like me."
Kelly's recent show of self-portraits, The Mirror Stages, was extended at Alexander Gray Associates but has now ended. Art Cat posts four of the images. If you're in NYC, you can see him performing Joni free at Castle Clinton in Battery Park on Thursday, August 6 at 7:00pm as part of the River to River Festival. Tickets (two per person) will be available starting at 5:00pm.
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