Finding Everyday Treasures in Kent
Michelle Pajak-Reynolds, a Northeast Ohio studio jeweler and multi-media artist, spends early morning savoring everyday treasures. "That time spent on the back porch with my tea, and my sketchbook and my three-legged dog and goofy cat is precious to me," she says. Out of those cherished moments came "Morning Meditations," jewelry pieces inspired by the light and shadow patterns in the artist's backyard. "I wanted to have a physical reminder of what's really important to me as I moved throughout my day, to have what I value literally on me."
The desire to create such an experience for others led her to design a community arts project called Everyday Treasures. Through an Ohio Arts Council Artist Express grant, the artist brought the first sparkle of that treasure to Kent, Ohio, the community where she earned her bachelor of fine arts and where she lived and worked for much of her adult life.
Everyday Treasures Comes to Kent: An Overview
Standing Rock Cultural Arts Center, the first organization to offer Everyday Treasures to its community, frequently features workshops, performances and arts experiences that reflect the area's progressive ethos and invite active participation. Executive Director Jeff Ingram says the artist residency that created Everyday Treasures underscores a core message of Standing Rock—the belief that "art is in everybody's life every day."
Day One-Community Through Children's Eyes
The activities surrounding the Everyday Treasures project were held July 10-12 with Standing Rock as the nucleus. On the first day, a group of children from Brimfield, who happened to be visiting the city as part of a Brimfield Parks and Recreation outing, showed that Kent is not only a place of deep significance to its residents but also a place worth traveling to, a place where simply walking around can enrich the mind and spark the imagination.
The children displayed great creativity through discussions about the people and places they encountered and in the artworks that ensued. One student's drawing of an alien and another's of an imaginary friend expanded the conceptual boundaries of what it means to belong to a group, while several artworks centering on play stood as a reminder that children often relate to their surroundings in different ways than adults.
Through art, a group of children explore what they find precious in their community.
Day Two-An Opportunity for Depth
The second day was a more in-depth experience. Although the planned art-making had been eagerly anticipated by everyone involved, the day began with a powerful reminder of other threads running through the lives of those taking part. Two of the participants—a mother and daughter—were prevented from attending by a death in the family while another could not attend due to illness.
That left Sarah Peck, a 13-year-old who is considering a career in architecture and enjoys reading stories set in medieval times, taking classes in drawing and coming to Kent regularly with her mom. Nonplussed at being the only student, she stepped up to the challenge with poise and determination.
Pajak-Reynolds also adapted to the change, embracing the opportunity to see the community through one young person's eyes and work with a young artist in greater depth.
Artist and Student: A Close-Up Portrait
The unusual turn of events provided a valuable opportunity to closely observe the unique work of a teaching artist and its impact on a student.
1. Starting with the Student's Vision
Pajak-Reynolds has no interest in teaching others to see what she sees or make what she makes. Rather, she seeks to help students express their own inner visions. She does that by questioning and challenging them as they develop their own artistic process. Sarah skillfully combined structure and serendipity with unexpected results that showed high levels of coherence, significance and artistry.
The process began with an exploration of what Sarah liked and found interesting about Kent. While other community members had most often mentioned the river and park as precious aspects of their community, Sarah's impressions were different. She drew from her early memories of seeing the Greek letters on fraternity and sorority houses and her interest in the Kent State Museum, which features important collections of fashion and decorative arts. After some conversation about the Greek alphabet, architecture and other related topics, the artist and her student set out on foot with a mission: photographing those everyday treasures that lived in Sarah's memories and using them as a springboard for imagining new possibilities.
2. Finding Images
As artist and student walked through Kent, evidence of Greek design were everywhere—from the familiar letters on fraternity houses to the base of a pillar containing parking notices; from the classically inspired buildings on the university campus to a sandwich wrapper littering the sidewalk. As the walk continued, the artist began to point out similar marks—marks left by man and by nature, by design and by chance.
It was immediately evident that Sarah "got it." She began finding and photographing interesting marks and she put her own stamp on the process by finding shapes that could be the inspiration for new marks. Perhaps this idea came from something she found intriguing in the artist's talk about Greek letters—the fact that the Greek letter A took its shape from an inverted ox.
Sarah and Michelle walked around the village of Kent and the Kent State campus looking closely and taking photos of anything that captured Sarah's interest. Those photos would inspire Sarah's later artwork.
3. Making New Connections
The museum visit and what followed continued the interweaving of predetermined design and chance encounters. An exhibit of embroidery introduced the concept of "drawing with thread"—another way of making marks that has a rich history and deep significance. Also adding new texture and imaginative possibilities to the day was "Confessions and the Sense of Self," a clothing exhibit by Noel Palomo-Lovinski. The bolts of cloth used to make Palomo-Lovinski's dresses are imprinted with text of women's secrets, fears and darker thoughts. The finished garments are designed to mirror those texts.
Sudden rain led to another kind of mark.
4. Adapting to and Using the Unforeseen
A sudden downpour during the return walk to Standing Rock sparked an unplanned stop at Empire, an emporium for lovers of henna body art and other forms of adornment. The store provided yet another example of a way to make marks with meaning and purpose. When offered a free henna tattoo, Sarah chose a coiled snake for its spiral shape.
5. Seeing New Possibilities through Technology
After returning to the shop, Sarah spent time looking at the photos she had taken. She and the artist shared what they saw and liked, but Pajak-Reynolds did not interpret or advise. Her comments centered on what she noticed in the photos—objects, as well as color, light and other elements.
In her altered images, she saw a landscape that inspired first a pen and ink map, then the addition of a third dimension.
Sarah photographed a telephone pole that was riddled with staples and transformed it using Photoshop.
Despite a lack of experience with Adobe Photoshop, Sarah quickly mastered the basics of manipulating images, such as cropping, changing brightness and contrast and adding colors and effects. She chose a few photos and began working with them. The results shone with creative possibilities.
6. Creating Spontaneously
The final day was devoted to pure creation. Although Sarah reported that she didn't spend Saturday evening thinking about the three-dimensional works she would create, she set to work on the first of three pieces she produced for exhibit as soon as she arrived at Standing Rock. The wide range of media and materials Pajak-Reynolds offered, along with a fresh look at the previous day's photos, was all the inspiration she needed.
The artist did not offer a single suggestion about what the work should look like or express. She simply helped with materials and tools. "Sometimes the challenge is knowing when to get out of the way and let them do their thing," she says. Sarah was intensely focused on her task. She produced three works of art using ink and paint, as well as beads and other objects she found in the artist's vast treasure chest of items and materials. The spiral of the henna design she had selected, the circuitous walk around the city and her heightened sense of place and sharpened ability to look closely at the everyday things surrounding her all made their appearances in her work.
7. Evaluating and Sharing the Work
Learn More
The Artist Express program supports one- or two-day artist visits for schools, arts organizations and other community organizations.
For more information and detailed guidelines, visit the OAC Web site.
.After mounting the works and once again looking at them, Sarah evaluated some of the artistic decisions she had made. In the young artist's sculptural forms and mixed media artworks, as well as in the original photos and Photoshop creations, Pajak-Reynolds pointed out a strong design sense in the use of color and was intrigued by the work's powerful contrasts between micro and macro, near and far.
Like many artists, Sarah had few words to say about "what it means," preferring to let the work speak for itself.
And speak it did. When the photos and artworks were exhibited for the community a week later at Standing Rock, attendees were engaged and enthusiastic—with each viewer finding some unique insight or connection to their own experience of life in Kent.
This article was published in March 2010.
