The essential difference between sculpture and painting is one of fact versus fiction. Painting is an illusion. No matter how modern and "flat," a painting presents a fictional space in which we lose ourselves. Sculpture is always a tangible object in real space. Painting hangs comfortably on the wall while contemporary sculpture moves from the pedestal to share the space of the viewer and often to articulate a spatial experience for the viewer.

Painting is handy. It is inexpensive to make and easy to revise. Try an idea - if you don't like it, paint it out. Sculpture on the other hand is unwieldy. Most tools and materials are expensive. And changes, except in wet clay or plaster, are slow. Try an idea - if you don't like it, throw it out.

That is why, through the 1950s, the history of "advanced art" has been primarily a history of painting. Their natures made painting fast and sculpture slow. It was only in the 1960s, with movements such as Minimalism, Process Art, and Arte Povera and the use of simple, cheap materials, that sculpture became the primary form for the avant-garde.

In the 1950s Lee Kelly began his artistic life as a painter in what he saw as the avant-garde. In the 1960s he matured as an artist, left painting, and became a sculptor. He still is.

Kelly didn't plan on being an artist. After graduating .from Roosevelt High School in Portland, Kelly went to Vanport College, the precursor of Portland State University. He was going to be an architect. He doesn't remember exactly why. "Maybe I liked mechanical drawing in high school," he says. He remembers that he was required to take a lot of art courses at Vanport. Those art courses and the Korean War provided the road to art.

Seeing the onset of the Korean War, Kelly joined the Air Force Reserves. Given his architectural studies, he was assigned work as a draftsperson. Then the reserves were called up and Kelly went to Korea. He was still a draftsperson. In fact his only view of the front was on an "R & R" (rest and relaxation) when he took his time off and hitchhiked to the front lines. Most of his "R & R" time - four or five days every six weeks or so - was spent in Tokyo. Japanese culture, and its visual manifestation, had a profound effect on him.

Kelly spent four and a half years in the Air Force, but he was only in Korea for a year. On return stateside he was stationed in Portland, where he continued his assignment as a draftsperson. But he tried to find more information on Japanese culture and gave his home a Japanese feeling. He also began taking night classes at the Museum Art School at the Portland Art Museum, now the Pacific Northwest College of Art.

1/7 Paul Sutinen, "Living In Sculpture: The Studio Work of Lee Kelly""