Kottie Gaydos: The States Project: Michigan

Kottie Gaydos: The States Project: Michigan by Rachel CoxFebruary 7, 2017

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©Kottie Gaydos

Kottie Gaydos recent project Unfixed is an interdisciplinary examination of vulnerability, healing, and change. Gaydos creates ceramic vessels which she coats in an unfixed cyanotype solution, then juxtaposes these forms next to manipulated sheets of unfixed cyanotype paper. Each medium undergoes a change. The process of manipulation determines the outcome, and the large sheets of paper Gaydos bends and folds in her studio inevitably become torn and shredded. Likewise, the pots are imperfect, wobbly, and unpredictable, an apt mirroring of human emotion.

The paper and vessels are metaphors for the self, needing to go through undetermined amounts of change and destruction to reach a final resting point, a moment of clarity and understanding.

Kottie Gaydos is an interdisciplinary artist from Rochester, Michigan. She holds a Master of Fine Arts from the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, MI and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, MD. Gaydos’s work is held in private and public collections in the U.S., China, and most notably, the Cranbrook Art Museum in Bloomfield Hills, MI. Gaydos serves as the Director of Operations, Curator, and Editor-in-Chief of Special Publications at the Detroit Center for Contemporary Photography (DCCP). Additionally, she is an adjunct professor at Towson University in Baltimore, MD, where she lives and works.

Unfixed

Acknowledging vulnerability as intrinsic to the healing process, I make and stack vessels coated with unfixed cyanotype, a light sensitive photographic emulsion. The resulting cairns, made of ceramic forms, are contemplations on the relationships between failure, healing, and vulnerability within the body. The cairns are made to function as counterpoints to photographic prints of unfixed cyanotype paper hung low on the walls. In concert, the cairns and photographic field of blue are a portal into a dialogue between the sacred place and the problematic body.