Featured image: Kellie Romany, Hold Me, Artist book, 6.5” x 4.5”, 2023. Courtesy of the artist.
by April Behnke
For interdisciplinary artist Kellie Romany, materials are a conduit for exploring complex ideas about identity and human connection. Based in Chicago, Romany’s practice spans painting, drawing, ceramics, and bookmaking. In each medium, her work delves into the realm of sensation and experience, extending beyond the mere visual.
Using a color palette of skin tones, she creates abstractions evoking constantly shifting definitions of race and belonging. Manipulation of materials through, as she describes, “abstracted bleeds, clots, rings, cracks, and rippling waveforms,” functions as a metaphor for the manipulation of identity.
“Using abstraction in various mediums allows me to not only digest what has happened and is happening but also leave room for other’s perceptions,” she says. “By looking at our collective and personal histories and goals through an abstract or poetic lens there is space for greater understanding, conversation, and connection.”
In her handmade artist books, Romany provides the viewer with an especially intimate, tactile experience. To fully engage with the work, they must touch its cover, turn its pages, and discover what is hidden within.
“Books are such a unique medium,” she explains. “They are read, they are held, and the intention of a book historically has always been to transfer an idea or information. Books are made to hold meaning. I use bookmaking to engage the audience with ideas of how information is transferred and what it means to hold something.”
‘Hold Me,’ a book she created during the pandemic, exemplifies this approach. To engage with the piece, the viewer must open a small box, containing within it a poem instructing them how to handle the piece. As they turn the pages of the book below, they encounter a tiny ceramic vessel easily held in the palm of their hand. It contains within Romany’s characteristically delicate, oozing paint forms in colors that recall the body, both its interior and exterior.
“It’s about vulnerability, which in many ways means allowing yourself to be fully seen,” Romany reflects.
As the viewer carefully, gently, and slowly passes through the experience of the piece they feel its delicacy viscerally. “‘Hold Me’ is predicated on the intimacy of touch and transformation. The viewer holds this book, reads the poem, lightly brushes their fingers on and around the paint, considers the subtle ridges of my imprinted fingertips, and is reminded that we are connected.”
Romany’s approach to bookmaking is highly conceptual, with every decision, from the number of books she makes to the materials she uses, dictated by her themes of choice.
For ‘Hold Me,’ she made five books, echoing the five fingers of the hand. Similarly, in her book project ‘58 Weeks of Longing,’ she created one watercolor for each week she was unvaccinated during the pandemic, a time when she longed for physical touch from her community.
Whether through paint, clay, or paper, Romany’s work is about finding new ways to connect with the viewer, to invite them into a shared space of reflection and understanding. To learn more about the artist, visit kellieromany.com and connect on Instagram at @kellieromany.
Artist Kellie Romany is published in Vol 38. Purchase a copy here.
April Behnke is an award-winning Chicago-based painter and writer whose studio practice centers on the building and breaking of patterns. She received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2011 and has exhibited nationally and internationally. Her work is featured in Georgetown University’s art collection and was included in the Rockford Art Museum’s 2022 Midwestern Biennial. Though born in Boston, Behnke has roots in the Midwest and a passion for exploring the region’s art scene. Her work is represented by Kim Storage Gallery in Milwaukee, WI.