Kelley Bell: Projections, Inflatables, and Artistic Spectacles

The Center for Innovation, Research, and Creativity in the Arts (CIRCA) presents artist Kelley Bell, who will present a talk entitled Projections, Inflatables, and Artistic Spectacles.

Bell is an artist/designer/educator celebrated for creating vibrant projection mapping works on a grand scale and gallery installations that emphasize joy, community, and human connection. In this presentation, she will take us on a tour of her best, worst and wildest art adventures and discover how delight and imagination can lead to contemplation and meaningful interpersonal connection, and how art doesn’t have to be big or in the public eye to be spectacular.

Blending mid-century design stylings, lively rhythms, and penny-arcade antics, Bell’s work radiates a distinctively playful energy that aspires to unlock deeper social potentialities. Bell’s large-scale projection mapping works and public installations have been featured in national and international festivals for almost two decades. Her experiences working behind the scenes while other folks are having fun inform the philosophy central to her artistic practice: that enjoyment and delight are essential aspects of human experience and growth. While many high-profile art spectaculars are often co-opted as fodder for social media, they are also potential opportunities for audiences to connect with themselves, with one another, and with the world in ways that are hopeful, meaningful, and enduring.

Bell’s career includes numerous prominent exhibitions and festivals across the globe. Highlights include: the MOMENTUM Festival in Toledo, OH (2019); Digital Graffiti in Alys Beach, FL (2024/2018); the Dlectricty festival in Detroit, MI (2017) and the Animafest International Animation Festival in Zagreb, Croatia (2017 and 2016). She has been a regular contributor to the MoCA Lights international light art festival in Patchogue, NY and the Artscape festival in Baltimore MD. In 2019, she studied under master woodworker and automata craftsman Matthew Smith in Falmouth, UK. In 2024, she was awarded the Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance’s Baker Artist Award in Interdisciplinary Arts and her work will be featured in the Baker Award exhibition at the Baltimore Museum of Art in April through July, 2025. Professor Bell ​earned an MFA degree from the Intermedia and Digital Arts program at UMBC and a BFA in Graphic Design from Pratt Institute. Kelley Bell is an associate professor of visual arts at UMBC.

Admission is free, and lunch will be provided. Space is limited, and an r.s.v.p. form will be available soon.

Image: Kelley Bell, Palazzo, 2022.