Summary
[Kelly Packer] was born in Kalispell, Montana in 1979 and grew up in Montana for most of her life. During high school, she was a member of the art club. "I think I actually lettered in art," she says. She attended the University of Montana in Missoula, where she started out majoring in journalism. "At some point, I got the courage to switch my major to art," recalls Packer. "We had an assignment to interview a cop and I just said, 'No, I'm not going to do this.' I just didn't go." She started taking drawing fundamentals. "I had to hear a lot of "What are you going to do with an art degree?'" says Packer. "I still get that a lot." Like art students everywhere, she ignored the (somewhat rhetorical) question and pursued her interest, forsaking a potential career path to follow her eye.
She had one memorable painting instructor, Mary Ann Bonjorni, who was "full-force committed" to teaching her students how to function, realistically, as artists. "She had all these strange requirements, like 'You must get a pickup truck,'" says Packer. "It seemed kind of odd at the time, but she was actually right. You need to have some way to move your work around." Packer has maintained a practical approach to her art, and has maintained her day job rather than becoming a full-time artist. "It gives me the liberty of not focussing on sales, " she says. She likes the freedom to be able to work on whatever she wants to. "Photography, collage, painting-I don't think of them as being different things," she explains. "It's all one thing: it's art."See the full content of this document
Extract
Bones and Piss
Kelly Packer is not a saint.
Although the paintings that she has created from her own image have been used to portray saints, they are less self-portraits than images culled for their convenience and proximity to the artist. They are not intended to represent her as a saint; far from it. "It is me embodying the idea of a saint," she ex...See the full content of this document
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