The avant - garde impulse in art to analyze and counter dominant
cultural models suited Kelley nicely, but, when he actually went to art school, he found
less the spirit of the avant - garde
than institutionally certified, what he called «corporate,» Minimalism and Pop, which had started as a reaction to Abstract Expressionism and had become, in a
little over a decade, nothing more
than mannerism.
There was magic in those waters, and nothing held more power in my imagination
than the elusive salmon... We knew
little, and understood
less, about the true stature of salmon in the ecological and
cultural heritage of our bioregion.