Here There - Pat Kelley's Art Show

My first impression of Pat's work was that it was intriguing and refreshing. I really liked how he took photographs of a typical subject (landscapes) and made them interesting and unique by making them panoramas that were warped into circular shapes. I like any art work that makes the viewer look twice, and Pat's images made me do that. I found myself getting up close and personal to the images trying to figure out how he created them. What I found particularly interesting was the fact that not only were the images 360 views, but also 180. I've never seen anything like that before. I thought the flip books were an interesting concept, but initially I wasn't sure how they corresponded with the art on the walls.
Pat's talk about his work cleared up all the questions I had about the art itself and also made me appreciate what he had created even more. After seeing his past work, I felt like I could really understand his present work much better. His fascination with text and images really stuck with me because that idea has been brought up in several of my classes this semester and before now I had never even thought about it. I also really appreciated his flip books after he explained them. I loved the idea of an object that is created with time consuming and elaborate technical processes ultimately being enjoyed in such a low - tech hands on way.
I took Pat's Intro to Visual Thinking last semester, so it was really interesting to finally see some of his work. He mentioned during his talk that he was "geekily obsessed" with Google Earth, which makes sense, since our final project for that class dealt with it! After seeing that his panoramas were all circular and that some of them were even spheres I immediately thought about Google Earth and if it was his inspiration for the final form of his photographs. He said it completely was, which really goes to show that anything and everything can inspire art. In turn, Pat's work has also inspired me. After the show was over I really got to thinking about panoramas and about creating final works of art that are comprised of not one photograph but many. I'm so used to thinking of my professors in a class room setting only that I often forget that they all have seperate profsesional careers outside of the classroom, so its really refreshing and inspiring to see what they create.