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Artist Kelly Mueller

artist’s statement & bio

kelly anne mueller

Kelly Anne Mueller is an artist, collaborator, and educator whose focus on the interrelationship between organism and environment, science and art, positions her as a visual deep ecologist. Deeply interested in the patterning relationships of the natural and man-made, Kelly’s multidisciplinary projects explore the tenuous space between natural laws of reciprocity and interconnectedness, the systems and cycles of nature, and the artificial, imposed order of human experience.

A first-generation college student, Kelly is a graduate of Northern Illinois University (MFA, BSEd), and has studied at Governors State University (MA) and The School of the Art Institute, Chicago. Following a 1-year position teaching painting and sculpture at Millsaps, she worked as an adjunct professor at a variety of institutions including Southeastern Louisiana University and the Louisiana Women’s Penitentiary. In 2006 she moved into New Orleans’ Antebellum “Tree House” live/work art studios, and the following year began teaching Drawing, Painting, and Art History in the high school Certificate of Artistry program at The Willow School (formerly Lusher), where she also contributed as Department Chair and Gallery Coordinator. In 2024 she accepted a position as Full-Time Instructor of Foundations at Université des Acadiens, University of Louisiana, Lafayette.

As a Surdna Fellow, Kelly camped beneath howler monkeys in the Amazon and observed animal rehabilitation at the National Institute for Amazonian Research in Manuas, Brazil . She has attended residencies at Hambidge Center for the Creative Arts (GA), Stonehouse Contemporary Art Residency,(CA), Dorland Residency (CA), Philadelphia Art House (PA), Stay at Home Residency, (TN), and others. Affiliations include representation through Baton Rouge Gallery, and active and multifaceted participation with artist-run The Front Gallery (2016-2021) on St. Claude Avenue in New Orleans. She has been included in exhibitions nationally,and internationally including Tiger Strikes Asteroid (LA), Feral (Mexico City), Scope NY, Miami Art Fair, Box 13 (Houston), Jonathan Ferrara (New Orleans), Little Berlin (Philadelphia), Pensacola Museum of Art (Florida), Three Walls (Chicago), and New Orleans Museum of Art. She has completed dozens of public and private murals in the Chicagoland region and Louisiana.

*photo credit Ole Oddlokken