Residency Period:
1 November 2014 - 31 October 2015
Bio
Kelly Malec-Kosak is an artist in Columbus OH, and is the Chair of Fine Arts at Columbus College of Art & Design. She received her MFA from California College of the Arts in Oakland CA. Her work has been featured nationally and internationally, most recently in "Protective Ornament: Contemporary Armour to Amulet" at the National Metal Museum and "Reflection: 100 Years of Jewellery/Metal Arts at CCA" in Oakland CA. She has received an Individual Excellence Award from the Ohio Arts Council, and the International Residency in Dresden Germany from the Greater Columbus Arts Council. In 2012, she traveled to Ravenstein, Netherlands to study with Ruudt Peters and a group of international artists. Malec-Kosak's work has been featured in Metalsmith, Humor in Craft by Bridgette Martin, and On Body and Soul: Contemporary Armour to Amulet by Suzanne Ramljak.
URL: www.kelly-malec-kosak.com
On-hiatus Proposal Summary
As higher education continues to evolve and adapt, Kelly finds herself in a unique and frustrating position in her own artistic practice. As the chair of Fine Arts at Columbus College of Art and Design, she has been tasked, along with the faculty, of restructuring the Fine Arts curriculum to better relate and adjust to the changing climate of higher education and art. The tremendous amount of research and collaboration demanded by this, along with her other work and personal obligations, has pre-empted her ability to participate in her art practice in any meaningful way.
During her residency at RFAOH, Kelly has decided to solely focus on this task of restructuring a college art program with a fundamental objective of writing an outstanding and relevant Fine Arts and Crafts curriculum, while also travelling for research purposes to various academic and commercial art sectors. She believes that her on-hiatus endeavour will lead to a new direction in her work and impact her art-making once she returns to it.
Final Report
I would first like to thank Shinobu and Matt for their incredible support - as I mentioned in my post, this residency period came at a time of personal and professional difficulty. I hadn't anticipated either, and Shinobu and Matt would gently guide me back on track with encouragement and reminders. That said, I am sorry I didn't participate as fully as I would have liked. But I appreciated the other artists in the residency, reading their posts and activities.
I started out with the intention of posting updates on reworking a curriculum, and that evolved into writing a new major for our college. I did wind up reaching my goal: the proposal and courses were submitted to our accreditors in August, and I'm still waiting to hear if it's approved. I'm weirdly OK either way - despite the hours spent, I was able to let it go quite soon afterwards. Now that I've had time to reflect, I can think of several things that probably aren't right and need to be reworked. I think, if nothing else, I should learn from this year I shouldn't sweat the little things.
The biggest thing I learned from this period of reflection: it made it clear that I desperately needed to get back to my work. As I looked back over the last three years, I became horrified that I allowed it to slip away - administrative duties, teaching, family all took priority over my work. While I know life ebbs and flows, it became intolerable to me, particularly in the last two months of the residency, that I haven't made anything of significance recently. No investigations, no research for myself, no experimenting. This really hit me the hardest when I started teaching a studio course this fall - I almost dropped out of the residency just to make something. I couldn't take it.
I'm back in the studio, but my idea of studio has changed. It's not a place - it's where/when/how I can make something. I can't set aside hours to work - not at this point in my life. So, I have to adapt. Right now, my studio is a canvas bag, which holds a capezio body suit, black thread, scissors and needles. I'm altering the suit through repetitive stitches, thinking with my hands. I discovered, to my delight, that TSA lets you take needles on airplanes (?) and recently, my studio and I went to San Francisco, where i enjoyed five hours of uninterrupted time, stitching, thinking, tying knots. I still am not sure why or what I'm doing. But I'm making, and I can't ask for more than that.
I think this residency helped me prioritize what I'm doing. I really had to think about why I've done what I've done - and how to change it. I thank you for the opportunity.
Very excited to post this…and it’s a slight excuse for missing July, and being very late in August. I was able to finish my draft of the NASAD document for the Contemporary Craft major, with an embedded business minor, on August 15…and there was much rejoicing. What this invovled was a large document full of academic speak –
Degree title and purpose
General body of knowledge
Degree competencies
Curricular tables
Program rationale
More stuff like that…but I think I am slowly forgetting it 🙂 It was fascinating to work on – painful sometimes, but really makes you think about what you’re doing. Is this the right thing at the right time in the right place? I had never really thought about our competencies for students; for example: “The ability to think, speak, and write clearly and effectively, and to communicate with precision, cogency, and rhetorical force.” Then you investigate the classes you’ve written, and you show where this competencies has been met.
Once it went to my dean, it was sent to our associate provost. I understand it’s a different document but if it gets approved? Fine by me…being invovled at the initial stages gave me more of a sense of responsiblity to follow through on what we wrote. Will this all align? Will it make sense? Does it leave room for flexibility? Serendipity? The document, in all its seriousness, does not seem to have humor at all. It sincerely believes in its purpose. But I hope it comes alive – with the students, instructors and the making – into something more: organic, always changing, fluid.
In relation to my proposal, my intent had been to build a relevant Fine Arts and Crafts Curriuculm. The Crafts one is still theoretical, but the Fine Arts curriculum is moving forward:
1. We have an Intro to Fine Arts Class in the first semester for our freshmen: it is integrated with Art History, Modern to Contemporary. So the studio person and art historian team teach it, working on projects, readings and assignments that work together. The first studio assignment was “25 self-portraits your mother wouldn’t hang on the refridgerator.”
2. We have an Integrated Sophomore Studio: it is the same type of course, but is integrated with Contemporary art history. I’m most excited about this class, because we were able to build a floor dedicated to Fine Arts Sophmores only this summer – it has a seminar/project room, and a large working space where each student gets a table, locker and chair. For the first time, we are really trying to build community in our major. I think/hope this space is the key – they have a place to work, all to themselves.
It’s all a big experiment – it seems right, but there are so many variables: the right faculty have to team-teach it, the students have to buy into a more contemporary way of making and the other faculty have to support it. Right now, it’s week 2 of the semester…so it’s all unknown.
For me it is dependent on skills you have, momentary mood and circumstances.
Kelly wrote on Sep 1:
If approved, it would launch next fall....
The hardest???? Hmmm I think I'm riddled with insecurities (if you didn't get that from previous posts)....but making art is the hardest for me. Not making art is isadly probably the easiest - life/work distracts and I can shove it down my list of priorities. Writing involves research which I love - there's a stop and start and a form (usually). Making art has no start or stop, no form, formula...but others might disagree?
shinobu wrote on Sep 1:
Hooray!! Congratulations Kelly!!! When does the actual program start? And, tell us, which was harder, doing this or writing a grant proposal for an art project, or not making art, or making art??
The part that haunts me mostly- AA Report – Day 88
So the house was broken into recently. Nothing taken and no other damage done than exists already. Thank goodness. Thieves who didn’t find what they were looking for and left without exerting malice, and still I’m shaken by them.
Other recent occurrences: bylaw paid a visit asking that we clean things up. All this and I keep telling myself to stop complaining because I’m blessed but frankly it’s been hard to get away this month and I’m feeling pretty down on myself that I haven’t been able to do more. My heart feels weighted. This continues to be a haunting factor.
(The part that haunts me mostly-A(rt) A(nonymous) Report-Day 88)
Photo: for a long time now this chalkboard has lived in the second floor hallway and this animal (born out of slow ruin) is like an old friend but also offers a reminder of work to be done.
Do we have a MAJOR problem as a society, Western world? I can't take it that being broken in is as common here as struggling with making art. A TV? Jeez.
Kelly wrote on Aug 31:
So sorry to read this - it is very violating. Someone came into our house this summer and took our TV? I don't care about a TV - but care that we were in the house, sleeping, at the time...I feel for you.
Georgia wrote on Aug 30:
It does help to vent collectively about such experiences.
Georgia wrote on Aug 30:
Sorry to hear that Matt! I've also been robbed before- I once awoke to an eerie feeling and then discovered a robber in my apt! I appreciate you both sharing your stories with me.
Matt wrote on Aug 30:
I've been broken into twice in the past 2.5 years and all my "non-art" valuables stolen, if that makes you feel less alone...
Georgia wrote on Aug 29:
Thank you Milena- it's a feeling of violation but I'm also left with a stronger knowing of what needs protecting.
milena kosec wrote on Aug 28:
I am sorry for you. Years ago thieves have broken in my house too. So I know how you fill. You need some time to forget.
From RFAOH co-directors
Heather Kapplow ended her 6 month on-hiatus residency a week early to participate in an art exhibition, thus resuming her art practice. Heather was not like a usual candidate in the sense that she decided to actively “stop” her art practice to ask compelling questions about what constitutes “artmaking” for herself. We feel that her honest, and often humorous approaches and examinations brought many refreshing angles to this same inquiry, posed and answered by many in our recent past. RFAOH sincerely wishes the best of luck for her post on-hiatus life, and look forward to hearing about what she is doing as art practice or not art practice.
Click “Final Report” to read on her experience at RFAOH.
Cool! I'd try eating this...my dad's corn might have the same disease right now, I'll ask him!
milena kosec wrote on Sep 1:
Enrique, thank to you I find out Slovenian name: “koruzna snet” and that some people eat it also in Slovenia. Thanks
enrique wrote on Aug 30:
hahahahaha, no way !
shinobu wrote on Aug 29:
Are you serious? We had fungus on our wooden window sill in our bathroom lately - should have shown it to you Enrique, maybe they were edible too. (eew)
enrique wrote on Aug 29:
eaa !! in mexico we call it huitlacoche (or so it seems), it is an eatable delikatessen in my contry, just google it and you may find a good recipe that maybe you want to try !! saludos !!
Open Sesame
We opened tonight. I mean, last night. It’s 3am. Going to bed. Gotta be back tomorrow morning for the Big on Bloor street fest. Tired. Great first night. Super positive.
Thanks! Drop by sometime! Would love to meet you in real life!
Matt wrote on Aug 24:
Congrats Ryan, Looks great!
14
Fui a Cholula, carretera al cielo, nubes de agosto.
Escribo en mi agenda, en mis notas, en mi cuaderno (en cualquier lado) que quiero empezar un proyecto, me siento dispuesto. Y sucede que no puedo empezar en las condiciones presentes pues tengo muchas actividades extras. Es una paradoja. La misma dispersión que disfrutaba es ahora la que me roba el tiempo, el valioso tiempo. Necesito entonces un plan para reducir mis actividades, y empezar a organizar mis sitios de trabajo. Me entusiasma la idea de tener nuevamente un quehacer, algo que tiene que ver con escribir, manipular imágenes, y trazar una visión de la vida contemporánea. No sé cómo se condensó, o como maduró, sólo sucedió así poco a poco, en la sombra. Y la urgencia de hacerlo viene junto a la certidumbre de querer hacerlo. No tengo tan claro de que se trata lo que voy a hacer, pero el punto de partida es aquella publicación que les compartí en diciembre. Para empezar, algo así es lo que me llama a producir.
• • • • •
I just traveled to Cholula, highway to heaven, clouds of August.
I write in my agenda, in my computer, in my notebooks (everywhere) that I want to start a project, that I’m ready. And then it happens that I can’t begin with it in these present conditions because I have too many extra activities. It’s a paradox. Having enjoy the dispersion now it steals my time, my valuable time. Therefor I need to reduce my activities, and start organizing my workplaces. I am excited to have a task again, something that has to do with writing, manipulate images, and drawing a vision of contemporary life. I don’t know how the idea was condensed, or how it matured, it just happened gradually, in the shadow. And the urgency of doing it comes accompanied with the certainty of wanting to do it. Still I’m not so clear about it but the starting point is the text I shared with you in December. At first, something like that is what calls me back to work.
Thank you for a compliment -- we still do feel complex about it ^^ but look, this just came up -- I've posted it on Milena's page too; a respected Canadian artist Ron Benner is having a "garden installation" titled Your Disease Our Delicacy (cuitlacoche) and serving "smut" to the audience! http://www.jmbgallery.ca/ExRonBenner.html
"Your Hiatus My Art"
enrique wrote on Aug 29:
dear shinobu, i'm thinking about it --- and that could be a goal achieved through the residency, no doubt about it --- i would say that you have done a great job; all these months i felt accompanied in different ways, and also questioned by everybody, not in a direct or obtuse form, but in a essential and existential way, and that is something i have appreciated pretty much --- but the thing is (like what you post in the FB page about me) that right now i'm in a transition, and my task is to gradually put aside a lot of things (hiatus things) that i still enjoy, in order to make enough space and then, to gain time to do what i want to do --- but anyway, soon we will reach the end of the residency, just two more months, so maybe i will withdraw next month, or maybe not --- muchas gracias y un saludo afectuoso !!!
shinobu wrote on Aug 24:
Does this mean you may have to withdraw soon? When this happens, we feel always a little complex - like, we are doing a great job and we are doing a terrible job - a paradox at its finest! (:
SHOP and SUPPORT RFAOH 2015 Summer Special!
As we continue to be challenged with securing the public funding needed for our 3rd year of operation or the publication of “annual report”, our DIY spirit thrives!
Here’s our latest SHOP and SUPPORT campaign with the newest and coolest stuff you can own while supporting RFAOH supporting artists not making art -> https://residencyforartistsonhiatus.org/shop.php
Some items are only available for the month of August, so hurry not to miss yours, and let your friends know by sharing this in your community — thanks!
milena kosec wrote on Sep 5:
For me it is dependent on skills you have, momentary mood and circumstances.
Kelly wrote on Sep 1:
If approved, it would launch next fall....
The hardest???? Hmmm I think I'm riddled with insecurities (if you didn't get that from previous posts)....but making art is the hardest for me. Not making art is isadly probably the easiest - life/work distracts and I can shove it down my list of priorities. Writing involves research which I love - there's a stop and start and a form (usually). Making art has no start or stop, no form, formula...but others might disagree?
shinobu wrote on Sep 1:
Hooray!! Congratulations Kelly!!! When does the actual program start? And, tell us, which was harder, doing this or writing a grant proposal for an art project, or not making art, or making art??