Fire and Peace: an Observation of Anger Through the Lens of Nature is an exhibition by Dallas-based artist Kelly Clemons. For this exhibition, Kelly has created mixed-media installations that combine elements of nature with porcelain to portray a journey of embracing her anger as a behavior that could be better understood when viewing it through the lens of self-preservation or even basic instinct.

She hopes to break away her bindings of understanding anger as purely an emotion and strives to embrace it as an integral part of her nature that can be expressed both positively and negatively. Kelly identifies with nature’s ability to be fully unaware of it’s seemingly violent behavior, but not in the sense that she ignores her anger. Instead, she wants to comprehend her anger as something native; something that must be accepted and even celebrated before it can be harnessed. The Roman Philosopher Boethius once said, “In other living creatures the ignorance of themselves is nature, but in men it is a vice.”

Observing the “ignorance” of nature in regards to anger and portraying that ignorance as beauty and peace is a large element of this exhibition. However, Kelly ultimately strives for this exhibition to reveal her on-going identification with anger as moving from struggle to acceptance, from fire to peace.