About AIKI (Karen Kelley)
I’m AIKI (Karen Kelley), a Chicago-born poet and visual artist, dedicated to making art since 1962.
I studied painting at Sarah Lawrence College, where I had the life-changing chance to study Folklore and Mythology with Joseph Campbell and work closely with Bauhaus-trained painter Kurt Roesch. Later, I studied plein-air pastel with Wolf Kahn at Haystack in Maine, deepening my connection to color, place, and rhythm.
My work has been shaped by the places I’ve called home—Rome, Paris, Kingston (Jamaica), Harlem, and now the Bronx, where I continue to create from my studio in Port Morris.
At 13, I met my mother’s cousin, the legendary Elizabeth Catlett, during a trip to Mexico. That moment sparked my path as an artist. Over the years, I’ve drawn inspiration from Catlett, Simón Gouverneur, Bob Thompson, Emilio Cruz, and more recently, the visionary Cuban printmaker Belkis Ayón. My visual language is rooted in a deep, ongoing study of African art—both traditional and contemporary.
I work across mediums: acrylic on canvas and wood, collage, Sumi-e ink, and charcoal on paper. My six-decade body of work is a spiritual and emotional archive—one that reflects personal history, ancestral memory, and cultural continuity.
My art speaks to Indigenous and African resilience, womanhood, and the balance between tradition and contemporary life. Humor, honesty, and side-eye often find their way into the work—offering both confrontation and invitation. I believe art isn’t just something we see, but something we feel. I hope each piece opens space for connection, reflection, and renewal.
For over 55 years, I shared a creative life with my late husband, the writer William Melvin Kelley (1937–2017). I illustrated his 1970 experimental novel Dunford’s Travels Everywheres, which was reissued by Vintage Anchor in 2020 and riverrun (UK) in 2021. In 2021, I received an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation for my work on the book.
Since the early 1990s, I’ve also kept a poetic diary—writing poems as if they were brushstrokes, extensions of my visual work. Influenced by ee cummings and Warsan Shire, my poetry explores the inner voice, memory, and the rhythm of image and word. In 2024, I edited a selection of these poems into a manuscript titled in the cut, accompanied by my ink drawings to bridge meaning and emotion.
Art is how I see, how I feel, how I speak.
It’s how I remember—and imagine.