About Me
Artist Statement
I explore how ritual and intention transform materials into vessels for love, connection, and healing. Working primarily with paper, the work is guided by energy and shaped through intuition and ritual.
For three decades, I have investigated energy from both scientific and spiritual perspectives: studying physics and astronomy to understand how it moves through matter and space, while maintaining a meditation practice and exploring energetic healing. A lifelong curiosity about spirituality, astronomy, and the nature of infinity frames the conceptual foundation of my work. These experiences have shaped my understanding of energy as a tangible force that can be perceived, directed, and embedded into material form.
I begin each work with meditation and ritual, allowing the energy I perceive to guide decisions. The slow, repeated gestures of cutting, folding, tearing, and layering paper allow the materials to respond to the energy I feel, shaping the invisible into form. My practice aligns with the lineage of artists such as Hilma af Klint, Agnes Pelton, and Guadalupe Maravilla, who explore spirituality, ritual, and unseen forces through material form. I weave universal energies (love, joy, wonder, kindness, compassion, gratitude, and peace) into the work itself, creating objects that hold these intentions and transmit them to the viewer. Recent projects explore how ritual can activate natural materials such as water, ash, and soil, charging them with memory and intention.
I also create conceptual projects exploring ritual and creative consciousness, including multi-year investigations that use daily practice and collective conversation as medium. My art practice is built on the belief that art can channel universal energy, materializing the invisible and fostering connection, reflection, and transformation. My work offers viewers a chance to experience these unseen forces, creating moments of presence, contemplation, and connection.
“My art is grounded on the belief in one universal energy which runs through all being and matter, all space and time.” — Ana Mendieta
Photo credit: Anavi Photography
ARTISTS ON COUCHES - ARTIST STATEMENT
In 2020, while recovering from a head injury, I meditated daily and kept receiving the same vision: sitting on a couch with other artists, discussing the mysteries of the creative process. That vision became Artists on Couches, a long-term conceptual project exploring creative consciousness.
My paper practice asks: how do I infuse energy into my art so the unseen can be experienced? AOC asks: how do we all experience creative consciousness? Both are investigations into the same invisible forces, just through different mediums. Where my paper work translates energy into physical form through solitary meditation, AOC investigates it through collective voices. I invite artists worldwide to reflect on one question about their creative process and share a photo of themselves on a couch. Each response becomes part of a growing archive, showing patterns of intuition, flow, inspiration, and consciousness emerging across hundreds of individual voices. One practice is material and personal. The other is collaborative and collective. My paper work translates energy into form. AOC translates it into reflection, dialogue, and shared experience. These are two different approaches that investigate the same questions about consciousness and energy.
“The cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself.” — Carl Sagan
Artist Bio
Kelly Joy Ladd is a visual artist whose practice explores consciousness, energy, and cosmic interconnectedness through paper-based work. Her intuitive approach aligns with transcendental artists like Hilma af Klint and Agnes Pelton. She holds a Liberal Studies degree from University of Central Florida, where she studied physics, astronomy, and eastern philosophy. Her work has been exhibited at Orlando Museum of Art, Mint Museum, and Mennello Museum of American Art. She is a 2025 Florida Prize finalist. Artists on Couches emerged from her meditation practice in 2020.