Beloved Knoxville artist John Woodrow Kelley, who has been splitting his time between Knoxville and New York for the past 45 years, has finally returned to Knoxville full time and will be the featured artist at next month’s L’Amour du Vin, the largest fundraiser for the Knoxville Museum of Art.
Kelley was the centerpiece last week of the Artist’s Luncheon, a signature part of L’Amour du Vin, at the new location of Bistro by the Tracks in Bearden (in the former location of The Orangery).
“The Knoxville Museum of Art is one of the most important regional museums in America,” Kelley told those at the luncheon. He said that, as a former architecture student, he knows well the work of the late architect Edward Larrabee Barnes, who was commissioned to design the Knoxville Museum of Art. “KMA is one of his best,” Kelley said. The KMA opened in its current building in 1990.
Kelley, a West Knoxville native and Webb School of Knoxville graduate, said that, as a child, he took art classes at the Dulin Gallery of Art, then located at 3100 Kingston Pike and the precursor to the KMA. “Some of the happiest moments of my childhood were spent sitting on those steps overlooking the river and drawing and painting,” Kelley said. Continue reading