For the exhibition with the couple Norin / Sommer at Folkets Hus exhibition hall a small booklet was made. Ingvar Claeson has written the text. Nordahl has laid out and taken pictures of the couple and their son Jockum, mixed with works of art out in the garden, in their house and studio at home in Flen, where they lived at the time of the report, for three years. The exhibition was a summary of what happened in their art during this time. Marita showed sculptures. Kelvin came up with “Real birdhouses, dream bags and handmade oils in meditative, happy, serious and streaked colors.”. In one of the pictures, you are met by a happy smiling family at the kitchen table, the child who smells the flowers. In another picture, Marita tenderly holds two small sculptures in each hand, near her torso, as if for protection. The sculptures look like little babies. In other pictures, her expressive human figures in motion. “On the walls Kelvin’s paintings, on shelves, on the floor Marita’s sculptures and Kelvin’s birdhouses and dream bags.”
Ingvar Claeson talks about Kelvin in the folder:
When you sit and talk with Kelvin, you meet a deep commitment to issues about the artist’s role in society, opportunities to influence small and large relationships. By working in the present, with oneself, strengthening one’s insight by looking back, bringing oneself, others to understand, being prepared for the future.
The art gallery’s archive folder contains a copy of a letter addressed to the then Minister of Culture Olof Palme, in which Kelvin pursues the issues. The language that breathes in the early 70’s is rich.
“Planning around cultural mediation is currently very unsatisfactory and sees too little of the larger structural context and of what society needs to be provided by values that lie in the mental realm.” and further “What does it help a society if the body is made of Swedish steel but the feet are made of clay – One day it will rain – and the body will fall.” (see attached letter in full) and the receipt that Sommer has signed: Of ___Life as an artist for eleven years received for ___action Artless Society m.m. dated the exhibition period 9-31 October 1971.
Sources: Södertälje konsthalls archive folder, text and compilation by Anneli Karlsson