Today we’d like to introduce you to Kelsey Wishik.
Hi Kelsey, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
I’ve spent the last 13 years working as a multimedia artist and movement trainer. Painting, sculpture, and ceramics have been my main disciplines and rotate seasonally so I can keep my practice sustainable. As I’ve grown, and my living needs have grown, I am becoming more of a designer of spaces and facilitator of training, but it’s natural to me now—after a lifetime, really of letting myself express what want to be expressed when the time is ripe. Ethics in practice develop over time. I’ve tried to reduce waste and maximize impact.
I create music as a gratifying way to express and share inspiration—and also as a way to balance the process of longer-term processes. So, for example, while I do the laborious attentive work of implementing a new body of sculptures, I released another music album, “Bhakti and Tapas” this Spring. I am still pulling the threads of previous projects: promoting my book “On the Move: A Return to Vastness”. Visually, I am currently focusing on building new large-scale metal sculptures, both in relief and free-standing. I am focusing on boldness and space-activation through some larger, long-winded works.
Creative force, I feel, is an act of love—or at least care—into, through, and for the world. My practice has endured for this reason despite challenges.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
My current challenges are personal and culturally based, I’d say. Personally, I’m making efforts to use my creative time and resources more purposefully, so I’ve actually minimized the number of projects going so I can maximize their potency. Endurance and perspective are always challenges when building anything. How can I make this last or have impact? Now, realizing that my passion became my livelihood through consistency and commitment—I see more and more of what it takes to balance this long-term. There is not only the creation process, but the maintenance of sharing the work, preserving, telling stories around it, connecting with people and spaces, but most of all—keeping the mindset fresh so that inspiration stays authentic—or—in fallow seasons—disciplined, at least. So, I’m pacing myself as to not burn out but actively in a push-phase, elevating my, especially sculptural work, in scale, refinement, and design.
Endurance as a creative means the acceptance of the ebb and flows of things—whether it be income, inspiration itself, response, or projects. In some cases, and in mine, the challenge to maintain practices that mutually support each other can be a mindbender. Teaching yoga and facilitating training through my company Catalyst Conscious, LLC ensures that I can support my art practices and maintain a healthy level of extroverted participation in my community. Art-making itself can be very intimate and private for me. I seek balance in these matters.
On a broader scope, I’ve been facing the challenge for several years of achieving larger-scale bids on public commissions. I’m still hopeful that public commissions will begin to stand by their diversity and minority inclusivity statements and, especially really start to support women and prioritize local artists. These roles can be life-changing and I would love to see these projects supporting more women and local people.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I have been blessed with many opportunities to work flexibly as an artist—sometimes creating murals, commissions, or smaller-scale paintings, and also contributing sculptures to both private and personal spaces which is the realm in which I’m heavily investing now. I’m hoping to take this commitment to the next level in the coming years as I up-level the design and impact of my work. I produce music and meditations as well as other media forms.
What matters most to you?
Growth and connectivity, I think currently are most important to my practice. I have a diverse practice but at some point, the question to myself is, “how do these works inspire, connect, activate space, or build bridges?” Because my visual art is not particularly based in narrative or objectivity, my hope is that they at least translate the fulfillment of an embodied personal experience. My work speaks to process, flow, the movement of creativity—and within that mess, those many shifting shapes, sometimes literal stories are excavated and sometimes just an abstract color scape or formal design. These nuances allow for the felt experience to bleed through—suggesting sensation, feeling, touch, movement, inner and outer.
Paintings or works from an abstract perspective are like “food for thought”—get the mind going and imagining for itself. I feel like they also function as sort of a rorshack ink blot—asking—“what do YOU see” and from seeing and experiencing we can begin to find meaning. There’s an adventure in there somewhere. At this time, I’m not super interested in being literal or repeating myself with a branded style. I do commissions for the exploration in their own right, of how my mind can meet with someone else’s vision. It’s a good practice. I really enjoy collaborating with others too, using my skills and delegating where I’m not the strongest.
Each medium has its own gifts and capacities to activate our experience. My intention is to invade all planes with love—that is to say—I wanna be the bright coffee cup in your hands, the book that reminds you to love life, the music that sirens us back to simplicity, the relief on the wall or the sculpture that inspires awe, uplifts the space, or invokes presence; not because it’s perfect, or ground-breaking, or symmetrically machined—but because it’s created by a human being telling one small part of a big, subjective story.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.worksbywish.com www.catalystconscious.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kelsey.wishik/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kelsey.wishik
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPBYNNTH_ytuXPlP17C0kTQ
- SoundCloud: https://open.spotify.com/artist/6RfraIXZXDIWMtjx8ZhJI5
- Other: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/kelseywishik
Image Credits
Kyleigh Ellis (photographer of two images where I am in the photo. Otherwise, I took the photos) IG: misskyleigh_may –Many thanks
