Sex, Fire and…Furniture
Used with Permission of ArtsHouston
June 2002, Vol. 3 No. 6
written by Stacey Weber
The rumor is true: the KGA Compound’s pool was one of the sites for Playboy’s recent “Girls of Enron” photo shoot. And in the coming months, Kelly Gale Amen’s interconnected group og Montrose houses, which serve as his home, office and gallery, will host other, equally outré events. Later this year, the gallery will offer a “living art piece,” a collaboration between artist Scott Griesbach and a Girl of Enron. This fall, Jay Branson will exhibit photographs shot, once again, by KGA’s pool. The exhibit is titled “Head.”
Intrigued? That’s the intent. Kelly Gale Amen would hate for his compound to bore you.
“Art,” Amen pronounces, “is to be embraced and enveloped in life.” A nationally acclaimed interior designer and furniture artist, the living portion of his compound serves as something of a showroom for his edgy work – metal and upholstered furniture that he calls “usable sculpture,” and pillows made of silk, chintz, chenille and real zebra hide. Yes, says Amen, you may sit on the chairs. You may hug the pillows. You may touch the sculptures. “I have nothing in my life that’s not meant to be used. The idea that something will become your retirement fund if you don’t use it is a fallacy.”
It’s clear Amen does not let fleeting trends or fear of negative opinions stymie his creativity. He has fun. After all, “If it’s not fun or interesting, why do it? Life is short. We’d better love every bit of it.” And it works. Amen’s “classic eclecticism” earned him Traditional Home magazine’s “Designer of the Year” and a feature as one of eight designers in its “Signature Style” book. Seven of his bronze benches with fossil stone tops were chosen for the Houston Museum of Natural Science, and six more have been commissioned for the new Eleanor Tinsley park.
More recently, Amen has been focusing his energies on the gallery side of the compound through a series of collaborations with local artists. As with his furniture and interior design, a salient theme running through every exhibit staged by Amen is an exploration of combining artforms and techniques. An extreme version of this philosophy animates the adjacent gallery’s current exhibit, “Fire” (originally part of FotoFest 2002). Artist John Palmer painted several pieces of Kelly Gale Amen furniture, which were then set aflame. Jay Branson shot some striking photos of the burning, which are displayed alongside the scorched tables and console. Through this dialectical process, the heat and flames left an extraordinary patina effect on the painted metal. Still functional, furniture has now taken on a striking new beauty.
