Heraclitus once said, “If you do not expect the unexpected you will not find it, for it is not to be reached by search or trail.” And so indeed, it would have been difficult to find Leighton Kelly ensconced in his haystack of defiant obscurity. Denying the saccharine pleasures of social media, fickle infamy while shunning the acrid limelight, Ol’ Lay foolishly thought he had successfully eschewed public notice. Nevertheless! The celestial bodies above decreed that the trajectories of Grass Valley’s own The Chambers Project and Leighton would mysteriously collude this September 9, 2023.
As we sit here perched upon the edge of the Abyss, eyes locked in its reflective gaze we may ponder what sort of tribute we might feed it’s ever questing hunger. And so, Leighton has decided to release his entire collection of works he had selfishly cloistered away in his hermetic studio of stubborn invisibility (located in scenic Hell-realm adjacent west Oakland California). Sparing no artistic medium from his meddling hands, your Ol’ Pal Lay will offer for your consideration every thing he’s ever done. Signs and sculpture, paint and pen, toon and reel will be revealed to the emissaries of the void; the people of the world.
It will now be up to you and your own mysterious trajectory to come and bear witness to this gratuitous display of artistic pandemonium in Leighton’s show “EVERY OTHER THING,” hosted graciously by the clever denizens of The Chambers Project Gallery. If indeed the Fates decree, you may once again exercise that ineffable discernment certain favored humanoids possess to determine for yourself, in real time, the baffling alchemy of trash and treasure.
Dear reader, if you have made it this far through this trial of excessive loquaciousness than I am fairly certain you have the moral fortitude to gird your loins and face the facts: You have been called to make the journey towards your destiny; to stand erect, mind agape and under the thrall of the most visually cacophonous art show you can find here at the very end of the world.
After all, what else is there to do?
