HOMEGirlbyCRM Q&A: Karen Aiki Kelley
Photography: Karen Aiki Kelley
Karen Answers the HOMEGirlbyCRM Questionnaire
Aiki talks all things Home.
This week my HomeGirl is Karen Aiki Kelley
Our HomeGirl this weekend is my dear cousin Karen Aiki Kelley. Karen has to be the first HomeGirl I ever knew, aside from my mom. She’s a wonderful Mom, Grandma, Great Grandma, an extremely talented artist, long-time Tai Chi Practitioner, and more. She was my late mother’s 1st cousin but more like her sister. When I was little, my parents & aunt took us to Jamaica several times to visit Karen & her family - Husband Bill (The late great novelist William Melvin Kelly) and cousins Jesi & Tika. Karen’s house was a true Home. I remember vivid colors, music, fresh home-cooked food, happiness, and laughter. Her space was open & free-flowing— and included many of her artwork pieces. Karen crafted, painted, and accessorized everything beautifully in her home herself. I see she passed that skill on to my cousins & they all still do it very well to this day. They really could all be featured on HGTV, ok?
Anyway, we’d return home to conservative DC all creatively fired up & turned out on the life we had just been immersed in. We’d be trying new things & emulating everything we merely lived & learned in Kingston. Karen inspired all of that. From new hairstyles to new music, to new foods to throw pillows, she’s always been an inspiration. She made me feel like an artist, as I always tried to draw & paint, LOL!
All these years later, Karen, the Matriarch of her wonderful family, is still that ray of Light, Love & Creativity. She happily answered the HomeGirl Questionnaire, and her answers are fun, full of enlightenment &, as always, inspirational! ❤️
Read our Q&A below.
What’s New & Good? So I’m entering a new decade, I made 80 and that’s new and incredibly interesting. I feel like aging is this amazing adventure full of changes and answers. I feel so much smarter but more intuitive, a much better listener. I’m feeling like my best creative work, is before me. So that’s both New and Good.
When you think of Home, what do you think of? Home for me is my sanctuary, my freedom my space where I can show my soul, no fronts, no pretense. I live for color so I bring that to my space, lots of colors. I can also explore movement I have a space to practice TaiChi which for me becomes a moving fluid meditation on how time flows like a river.
What Song or music reminds you of Home? So, I love jazz Thelonious Monk, Sonny Rollins, Lady Day, and Queen Ella. I also must have some Brazilian beats, Jorge Ben, Rosa Passos, Gilberto Gil. Then, there’s old school, Smokey singing ‘Ooo Baby Baby. Ok, I love Megan Thee Stallion on so many levels and my Bronx Girl Cardi B. I guess I have eclectic tastes in music. I can’t leave out the Blues. I’m a Chicago girl and I experienced Muddy Waters, playing live, in a Chicago dive bar with sawdust on the tile floor and that was pure life.
What three things must be in & around your Home? I must have fresh flowers a color-filled bouquet and a dozen white roses in memory of my late great love, my husband, and best friend of 55 years. I also must have a garlic press — I make a wicked garlic balsamic olive oil salad dressing. Interesting throw pillows are must-haves.
What’s the favorite room in your Home & why? I think my bedroom. My bed is my gypsy tent. My daughter painted my white metal four poster bed with copper verdigris paint and I’ve hung drapey blowy fabric, some ribbons some fairy lights, and lots of pillows, it’s just me and I can escape the world and float.
What’s your favorite Home-cooked meal? Hands down it’s baked crispy chicken wings!! I recently found a recipe for Greek-style marinated in garlic olive oil and oregano served with a lemony sauce and crumbled feta cheese. Yasss. A good salad of baby greens and arugula, a glass of lovely Rosé...That’s my favorite meal, except when my granddaughter throws down on some tostones, rice, and black beans with Dominican style pickled red onions and crushed garlic in olive oil....my baby girl can cook!
When you leave home where are you usually going and where can you not wait to go? When I leave home I’m heading to my art studio. I take 2 busses, from the Grand Concourse to 3rd Avenue South Bronx, then across 3rd Ave…I love the ride looking out the window I see Mexican grocery stores and restaurants, Dominican bakeries, a shop for ‘Faja’s’ a special kind of shapewear that can give you an hourglass shape with a pert ‘boot-ay’.
What’s your home away from home? My studio is my special place, I have my Brazilian music playing and my paint and some glitter and I are free. I’ve been making art for a long time, 60 years, with babies, traveling, living in Rome, Paris, Jamaica. For years I’d paint on the floor or the kitchen table, stealing the time.. so 5 years ago when I had the chance to rent a real studio space I found my Nirvana.
What’s been some good old-fashioned Home training you live by? My mother believed in Good manners! Please and thank you, respect for all people, I taught my daughters, and now the grandchildren and great-grandson who’s (gasp, clutch pearls) a 15-year-old navigating high school in this Pandemic. Also, my mother taught me to ALWAYS look good at home. She had beautifully tasteful loungewear..I kind of have to improvise on that but I do ‘cheekbones’ blush bronzer and some eyes every day. My beautiful granddaughter gives me eyeshadow palettes and yes I do play with them, and a good mascara.
What three people - living or deceased - would you have in your Home for an intimate evening of music, food & fun? So this one is strangely difficult to answer, what three people.. so here goes. Redd Foxx because I love to laugh, Elizabeth Catlett who was family and a truly great artist and who had a divinely wicked sense of humor, and of course William Melvin Kelley, he was a raconteur with an opinion on absolutely everything. You said 3 so I couldn’t get to my live people, but maybe next time.
Stay connected with Karen and her work.
Instagram: aiki29
