A Place in the Family of Things by Kellyann Marie brought rawness and honesty to the space of 621 Gallery. Florida’s roots are put on full display by the profound works created by Kellyann Marie; a taste of U.S. Southern culture, as well as imagery of poverty and American struggle find home in Kellyann Maries’s pieces. Kellyann Marie’s work opened at the First Friday of December in the 621 Gallery, and held its exhibition until December 21, 2025.

“I come to this work by way of Florida; through heat and marsh, through the quiet hum of Highway 41 that taught me what it means to see slowly. My quilts and paintings come from that place: from the road, from poverty, from queerness, from the family that made me and the distances between us. My brother used to shave my head on my mama’s porch. That act (small and ordinary) was a tenderness I still return to. 

I make these works to hold that tenderness. To offer it back. To let you see me, and maybe to see yourself reflected in the grit and color, the stitched-together fragments of home. The quilts hang like stories passed down, built from the second-hand, the discarded, the too-much-loved. The paintings carry the gestures of those who raised me, those who stayed, and those who left.” 

- Kellyann Marie