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The New Contemporary Art Magazine
San Francisco based husband and wife duo Ferris Plock and Kelly Tunstall (featured here) share a style that is loose, playful and refined at the same time- a collaboration that they lovingly call "Kefe". Plock's blocky and cute animals and Tunstall's starry-eyed girls in funky outfits look very different on the outside, but happily coexist and enjoy each other's company. The couple brings their characters into the same visual space by working with the same colors, techniques and art materials. The idea of coming together and transitioning between two spaces is a running theme in Kefe's upcoming exhibition "Holding Pattern" at 111 Minna Gallery in San Francisco.
Together known is KeFe, Kelly Tunstall and Ferris Plock are getting ready to debut their third solo show at Fecal Face in San Francisco tonight. Titled "Inside Voices," the exhibition features playful, colorful collaborative paintings. The artists culled inspiration for these works from their experiences with parenting two young boys. The term "inside voice" is often used to quiet children, which can, in effect, stifle their self-expression when it's inconvenient to adults. KeFe reclaimed this term and made it a more liberating one, describing their conception of an "inside voice" as the inner voice that guides one's creativity. By following this internal teacher, they created work that brims with a childlike sense of curiosity.
Partners in art and in life, Ferris Plock and Kelly Tunstall collaborate seamlessly, almost out of necessity. They work in close proximity to one another in their studio, switching between parent duty to their two young children and working on their paintings. Elements of Plock's blocky, geometric style end up on Tunstall's softer, more painterly canvases and vice versa. The couple, sometimes known by the monicker KeFe, currently has an exhibition at San Francisco's Shooting Gallery titled "Floating World: Part One" on view through August 9. Part two of this body of work will open at Antler Gallery in Portland on July 31, creating a visual dialogue between two cities.