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Draft:Kelly Goff

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Kelly Goff
Born1980 (age 45–46)
Willemstad, Curaçao
EducationNew College of Florida; Rhode Island School of Design
Known forSculpture, installation art, and public art
Websitekellygoff.net

Kelly Goff (born 1980) is a Curaçaoan-American sculptor and educator whose practice includes public art, installation, video, and photography. Public art has become a central part of his work, with sculptures installed in parks, streetscapes, and public art programs across the United States and internationally. His ongoing Continuous Line series includes works created for public spaces in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Colorado, California, and South Korea.[1][2][3][4][5][6]

Goff's practice is shaped by travel and sustained engagement with specific places. His projects often develop through extended research, long-term planning, material experimentation, and the creation of tools or processes suited to an individual work. He works across a wide range of materials and combines traditional fabrication methods with emerging technologies.[1][7][8]

Themes of geography, movement, migration, resource extraction, industry, and the natural landscape recur throughout Goff's work. Published accounts have connected these concerns to his upbringing in Curaçao, where coastal beauty and heavy industry exist in close proximity. Across both his conceptual projects and public sculptures, Goff uses material, process, and form to explore how people understand and move through places.[8][9][1]

He has taught at Wheaton College since 2013 and is Professor of Art.[7][10]

Early life and education

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Goff was born in Willemstad, Curaçao, then part of the Netherlands Antilles, and spent much of his childhood on the island.[10][1] He grew up near the Caribbean Sea, an industrial harbor, a dry dock, and an oil refinery. Published accounts have connected the proximity of these natural and industrial landscapes to recurring concerns in his work.[8][9][7]

He studied visual art, biology, and chemistry at New College of Florida, receiving a Bachelor of Arts in 2002. He earned a Master of Fine Arts in sculpture with honors from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2009.[7][10]

Career

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In 2012, Goff exhibited Ghost at the Wassaic Project in New York. The cast-paper sculpture reproduced a piece of industrial machinery and was installed upside down beside the original machine in the former Maxon Mills building. Allison Meier of Hyperallergic included it among the exhibition's standout works, interpreting its fragility and inversion in relation to the collapse of the factory and its former economic role.[11] Chronogram also featured the work, describing its white, cone-shaped form as highly visible against the exposed wood of the mill.[12]

Goff and Lauren Cotton won Bromfield Gallery's 2013 SOLO competition, judged by Dina Deitsch, then curator of contemporary art at the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum. The award led to Goff's solo exhibition Break Down in Boston.[13][10] That year, the St. Botolph Club Foundation awarded him the Amelia Peabody Award for Sculpture.[14]

In 2015, Goff received an Artist Fellowship in Sculpture, Installation, and New Genres from the Massachusetts Cultural Council.[15] That year, New York magazine highlighted Dumpster, a deteriorated refuse container with an interior treated with blue pigments and mica, at the Wassaic Project.[16][15]

Goff presented the multimedia installation Emerald City at the Boston Children's Museum in 2016. The exhibition included full-scale tree forms made from scrap wood, concrete, and cast paper.[17] Later that year, Dumpster was installed in the underground magazine at Fort Jay during the Governors Island Art Fair.[18]

Goff began the Continuous Line series in 2020 with two sculptures made from recycled steel pipe for Art on the Trails at Beals Preserve in Southborough, Massachusetts. Continuous Line I (tangerine) and Continuous Line II (aquamarine) received first prize in the juried exhibition.[2][19]

Later works from the series appeared through public art programs in Providence, Colorado Springs, Palm Desert, and South Korea.[3][4][5][6] His aluminum sculpture Arboreal Line was installed through the City of Greeley's Uptown Trees program in 2023.[20]

In 2022, Goff participated in the 21st Geumgang Nature Art Biennale near Gongju, South Korea. Working with Wheaton alumna Hyunmin "Min" Bae, he created Continuous Line VI (bamboo), a site-responsive loop made from bundled bamboo and rope at Yeonmisan Nature Art Park.[6][19]

Artistic practice

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Goff's work encompasses sculpture, installation, video, photography, and public art. Across these media, he has explored relationships between landscape, industry, geography, and movement. His projects frequently draw on resource extraction, distance, and migration to examine how materials, objects, and people move through the world.[8][9][7]

Ghost was among Goff's earliest works to receive significant critical attention. Reviewing the exhibition, Hyperallergic described the work's reversal of the physical qualities associated with heavy machinery, while Chronogram emphasized its dialogue with the former mill in which it was installed.[11][12]

During the 2010s, Goff increasingly turned toward questions of geography and movement. Projects including Crates, Two Views, Coconuts, and his antipodes project examined relationships between distant places through mapping, migration, and the movement of materials across oceans. Accounts of his work have connected these concerns to his upbringing in Curaçao and to landscapes shaped by industry and resource extraction.[8][9][21]

The Continuous Line series introduced looping welded forms in place of the recognizable industrial objects that characterized Goff's earlier work, while continuing his exploration of movement, connection, and place. First exhibited in 2020, the sculptures trace pathways through public spaces and are intended to be viewed from changing positions.[2][4][19]

For the Geumgang Nature Art Biennale, Goff adapted the series using bamboo. The material was bundled for strength, and the work's path was determined collaboratively in response to the trees and topography of the site.[6][19]

Selected works

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Two Views (2016) is a two-channel video installation that connects footage from Key West, Florida, and Watamula in northern Curaçao, locations approximately 1,920 kilometers apart. The images are displayed on opposite sides of a dividing wall. Goff described the work as representing two halves of his biography, noting that he had lived for 18 years in Curaçao and 18 years in the United States when it was completed.[8][21]

Dumpster (2012) reworks a deteriorated dumpster that Goff found on the street. Its blue-green interior, treated with paint, translucent pigments, mica powder, and resin, contrasts with its corroded exterior.[8][15][21]

Ghost (2012) is a large cast-paper sculpture installed at Maxon Mills. Hyperallergic described it as an inverted paper reproduction of an industrial machine placed beside the original, while Chronogram described the work's cone-shaped white form against the mill's exposed wood walls.[11][12][21]

Crates (2014) is a nested series of shipping crates made from Alaskan timber that Goff harvested and milled by hand during a six-week wilderness residency. The crates traveled by boat, aircraft, and truck to exhibitions, accumulating marks of transit. The installation includes Passage (2014), a sound work created with composer Ben Wasserman from recordings made during the residency.[9][8][14][21]

Souvenir I (2018) is a bronze replica of a section of rocky ground that Goff encountered while hiking in Bhutan. He returned to the location to create a photogrammetric scan, which he later used to produce the cast sculpture.[8][22]

Containers (2020–2023) consisted of 30 miniature freight containers made from pigmented concrete and installed near a former mill, milk factory, and railroad tracks in Wassaic, New York. The project was supported by the New York State Council on the Arts and the Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation.[23]

Continuous Line (2020–present) is a series of large outdoor sculptures generally made from recycled or painted steel pipe arranged as an unbroken looping line. Individual works have been installed through public art programs and sculpture exhibitions in the United States and South Korea, including a bamboo version created for the Geumgang Nature Art Biennale.[2][3][4][5][6]

Public art commissions and installations

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Year(s) Work Program and location
2020–2023 Containers The Wassaic Project, Wassaic, New York[23]
2020 Continuous Line I (tangerine) and Continuous Line II (aquamarine) Art on the Trails, Beals Preserve, Southborough, Massachusetts; awarded first prize[2]
2021 Limb Support Art on the Trails: Mending, Beals Preserve, Southborough, Massachusetts[24]
2022 Continuous Line V (levity) The Avenue Concept, Providence, Rhode Island[3]
2022 Continuous Line VI (levity) Art on the Streets, Colorado Springs, Colorado[4]
2022 Continuous Line VI (bamboo), created with Hyunmin "Min" Bae Geumgang Nature Art Biennale, Yeonmisan Nature Art Park, near Gongju, South Korea[6][19]
2023–2024 Continuous Line VII (levity) El Paseo Sculpture Exhibition, Palm Desert, California[5]
2023 Arboreal Line Uptown Trees, Greeley, Colorado[20][19]

Teaching

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Goff joined the faculty of Wheaton College in 2013 and teaches sculpture, three-dimensional design, and public art. He later served as chair of Visual Art and as chair of the Creative Arts Department. In 2026, he was named the Mary Heuser Professor in the Arts for the 2026–2031 term.[10][7][25][26][27]

Goff coordinates Public Art at Wheaton, a program that oversees temporary and long-term installations on the college campus.[10][28]

References

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  1. ^ a b c d "About". Kelly Goff. Retrieved August 1, 2026.
  2. ^ a b c d e Weber, Catherine (July 18, 2020). "And the Winner Is..." Art on the Trails. Retrieved August 1, 2026.
  3. ^ a b c d "City of Providence Downtown Public Art Walking Tour". City of Providence Department of Art, Culture and Tourism. September 8, 2023. Retrieved August 1, 2026.
  4. ^ a b c d e "Continuous Line VI (levity)". Downtown Partnership of Colorado Springs. Retrieved August 1, 2026.
  5. ^ a b c d "El Paseo Sculpture Exhibition 2023-2024". ArcGIS StoryMaps. November 18, 2024. Retrieved August 1, 2026.
  6. ^ a b c d e f "Professor, alumna collaborate on public art in South Korea". Wheaton College. September 16, 2022. Retrieved August 1, 2026.
  7. ^ a b c d e f "Kelly Goff". Wheaton College. Retrieved August 1, 2026.
  8. ^ a b c d e f g h i Mullan, Danielle (October 5, 2018). "Artist Kelly Goff discusses resources, labor, density as sources of inspiration". The Lafayette. Retrieved August 1, 2026.
  9. ^ a b c d e "Kelly Goff in Uni Arte". Curaçao Art. February 27, 2016. Retrieved August 1, 2026.
  10. ^ a b c d e f "Resume". Kelly Goff. Retrieved August 1, 2026.
  11. ^ a b c Meier, Allison (August 8, 2012). "Why Weren't You in Wassaic This Weekend?". Hyperallergic. Retrieved August 1, 2026.
  12. ^ a b c Sparrow (August 1, 2012). "Portfolio: Wassaic Project". Chronogram. Retrieved August 1, 2026.
  13. ^ "Solo Competition". Bromfield Gallery. Retrieved August 1, 2026.
  14. ^ a b "EA Winner: Kelly Goff". St. Botolph Club Foundation. December 31, 2013. Retrieved August 1, 2026.
  15. ^ a b c "Kelly Goff, 2015". Mass Cultural Council. Retrieved August 1, 2026.
  16. ^ "Find Your Inner Artist in Wassaic". New York. July 27, 2015. Retrieved August 1, 2026.
  17. ^ "Emerald City". Wheaton College. May 23, 2016. Retrieved August 1, 2026.
  18. ^ Meier, Allison (September 1, 2016). "Harboring Art in Historic Spaces at the 2016 Governors Island Art Fair". Hyperallergic. Retrieved August 1, 2026.
  19. ^ a b c d e f "Public art". Kelly Goff. Retrieved August 1, 2026.
  20. ^ a b "Three New Uptown Trees Grace Greeley". Visit Greeley. December 5, 2023. Retrieved August 1, 2026.
  21. ^ a b c d e "Work". Kelly Goff. Retrieved August 1, 2026.
  22. ^ "Bhutan". Kelly Goff. July 4, 2017. Retrieved August 1, 2026.
  23. ^ a b "Kelly Goff: Containers". The Wassaic Project. Retrieved August 1, 2026.
  24. ^ Melo, Beth (June 21, 2021). "Art on the Trails: Explore the exhibits; Call for Poetry". My Southborough. Retrieved August 1, 2026.
  25. ^ "A course that changed a classroom". Wheaton College. May 5, 2026. Retrieved August 1, 2026.
  26. ^ "Honors Convocation". Wheaton College. April 30, 2026. Retrieved August 1, 2026.
  27. ^ "Endowed Professorships". Wheaton College. Retrieved August 1, 2026.
  28. ^ "Public Art at Wheaton". Wheaton College. Retrieved August 1, 2026.
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