Kelly and Kyle Phelps

Identical twin brothers Kelly Phelps and Kyle Phelps are professors at private Catholic universities in Ohio. Much of the twins’ work is about blue-collar workers, race relations, and the everyday struggles of common people.

The Phelpses work collaboratively to create artwork and share a studio in Centerville, OH. They share numerous grants, regional, national, and international exhibitions, and commissions. Their work is also included in many museum collections across the US; notable private collectors of the twins’ work are film director Michael Moore and actor Morgan Freeman. Their work has been reviewed in major magazines such as Ceramics Monthly, Sculpture, and American Craft.

Before entering the world of academia, the Phelpses experienced firsthand the struggles of the working class. They grew up in a blue-collar factory town in Indiana. They were inspired by family and friends who worked in various manufacturing plants, steel mills, foundries, coal mines, and railroads in the American Midwest, Rust Belt, and Appalachia. These everyday people became working-class heroes that have inspired the twins’ art for more than two decades.

For several years, the Phelpses have juxtaposed handcrafted sculptures cast from clay or resin with found, site-specific objects. They have combined gears, corrugated metal, and scrap-machined parts with modeled figures to create visual narratives about the blue-collar experience. Abandoned industrial sites such as factories, steel or textile mills, warehouses, coal mines, and railroad yards are the primary sources where the twins find, archive, and re-purpose found objects for their narratives. Some of the objects are soot-covered or soaked in cutting machine oils that emit a distinctive odor commonly found in automotive factories. These elements combine to give their work an authentic sense of place and time.

The twins are deeply inspired by religious iconography such as relief sculptures used in churches to represent the Stations of the Cross. The Phelpses recognize each worker depicted in their narratives as those who go to work every day “religiously.” To further the metaphor, the workers in each narrative personify a congregation; their work settings (factory, steel mill, foundry, coal mine, etc.) symbolize the “church”; and each finished work is constructed like an altar or shrine dedicated to working-class struggles.

[Source: Museum Staff]