Parallel Play by Kelli Connell and Betsy Odom

The Conversation #2
October 21 – November 19, 2011
Opening Reception: 3 – 6pm, Sunday, October 30, 2011
Curated by Anne Harris

RAC presents Kelli Connell and Betsy Odom in Parallel Play. This is the second exhibition in our series called The Conversation, featuring two artists who together have some form of creative discourse.

Kelli Connell and Betsy Odom have been together for 7 years, married for two. They share both home and studio. While their work is not collaborative, it’s made in crooked parallel with intersections, rhymes and overlaps. This show is about their mutual brainstorming. Both artists work prolifically in sketchbooks. In the spirit of conversation they’ve designed their show around this mutual creative process, their shared lives and shared studio practice. We’re invited to peruse the original sketchbooks, as well as over a thousand sketchbook pages reproduced and displayed to reflect the on-going conversation and non-conversation between these two artists.

Kelli Connell’s photography was described by Martha Schwendener in The New York Times as “ripe with big ideas: doubling (genetic versus digital), narcissism, same-sex relationships, the simulated versus the real, and the role of images in fabricating narratives.” She is best known for her work Double Life, now showing at Catherine Edelman Gallery, Chicago and just published in her book, also called Double Life. She has exhibited internationally at the Yossi Milo Gallery, New York, the Australian Centre for Photography in Sydney, the Cleveland Institute of Art, and the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago.

Betsy Odom has exhibited internationally at the Shanghai Museum of Fine Arts, Shanghai, China, the Galveston Arts Center, TX, Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago and Three Walls Gallery, Chicago. She curated the group show “Tomboy” at the Glass Curtain Gallery, and was listed as one of Chicago’s strongest emerging artists in “Breakout Artists 2010,” Newcity Art