BELFAST — Mark Kelly likes to joke around. Several months ago, he was busting on a good friend of his, Christy Monroe, when she’d finally had enough of his guff and called him out on it.

“I’m going to make up a bumper sticker calling you a jerk,” she said.

She made good on her word and for awhile there, it caught on. A lot of people in the Midcoast were seeing “Mark Kelly is a jerk” stickers all over town. There was even a Facebook page dedicated to it. But did it bother Kelly? Nah.

“I think most people get the joke,” he said.

Kelly is an artist whose work focuses primarily on drawing and currently has an exhibit called Murmuration on display at Chase’s Daily restaurant in Belfast. The exhibit features a large mural and several pen and ink drawings of birds, one of his favorite subjects.

“I kind of have a long running fascination with them,” he said.

Toward the back of the restaurant, where all the farmstand produce is, an abstract series of his pen and ink drawings hang against the white wall. Made up of intricate black dots, they appear to be patterns of shapes and Kelly explains they are bird studies. More specifically, they are the patterns one would see in a flock of starlings. Each drawing represents a different way the flocks come together and soar through the air. 

“I started the series based on some videos I was watching,” he said. “They group together, like 5,000 birds, and fly in these patterns. Then, I started doing my own version of them, drawing randomly to see where it would take me.”

This is his first show at Chase’s Daily but he regularly shows his work throughout Belfast, often at Aarhus Gallery, where he is a founder and copartner.

“When we started Aarhus, we wanted to do something different, because there are a lot of galleries that are very traditional, very tourist-driven,” he said. “And that’s exactly what we didn’t want to do. Our idea was to show our own work but also to also invite other artists for group shows or for solo missions. We also like to feature music, plays and writers.”

A multi-talented freelance artist, he also plays percussion and turntables in an improvisational experimental music project and has been DJ-ing for about 20 years.

“I do a lot of reggae, a lot of vintage Jamaican music,” he said. “I think some people like it, but some people aren’t into it. When I go out, I really appreciate hearing music that I’ve never heard before, so that’s why I play it.”

True to his irreverant nature, he’ll be teaching an adult ed class in the fall titled “Not Your Average Art Class.” This is an understatement. Billed as a class to “broaden students’ ideas of seeing and art-making through experimental techniques and traditional exercises,” Kelly said he plans to use alternative materials, such as fireworks in his upcoming class.

Yes, fireworks. Obviously this won’t be happening in a classroom.

“I do a lot of stuff with fireworks and burning paper in order to do abstract drawings,” he said. “I’ll set up the fireworks to explode over the paper and let it do its thing. The idea in this upcoming class is to shake things up. I want to encourage students to bring their own alternative materials into the class. It’s okay to screw up. It’s okay to make crappy art, at first. It’s all part of the process to make something good in the end.”

The class starts Sept. 18 and runs through RSU #13 Adult Ed.  For more information on Kelly visit his Aarhus page.

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com