Olivet art professor Mary Beth Koszut helps her students recognize that mistakes and failures can become moments of significance.
“That’s what I’m doing in this process,” professor Koszut says, explaining her latest art series.
Mommy Monsters is a series of surrealist pieces on the frustrations and joys of motherhood, some of which have been recently exhibited on campus and at the Union Street Gallery in Chicago Heights.
“I’m taking the idea of spills or mistakes and making meaning from them,” she says.
Professor Koszut, who studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and has taught art and art education courses at Olivet in the Department of Art and Digital Media since 2012, says this latest project was inspired by a session at the National Art Education Association that focused on balancing teaching with creating. Often art educators feel torn between the demands of teaching art and producing art.
“It’s especially challenging for moms,” professor Koszut adds. “At the time, my kids were toddlers and my art had shifted to the margins of my time. I was asking myself, ‘How am I still creating, still pursuing art?’”
The answer, she says, came in the everyday experiences of mothering.
“I started working with literal spills, failed drawings and leftover paint,” she says.
The result was a shift from the large, abstract oil pieces on canvas she had created in the past. These new pieces are smaller, each only 5 x 7 inches, and created in watercolor, gouache and colored pencils. The images are at once haunting and whimsical, evoking the everyday experiences of motherhood in dynamic surrealist vistas.
“Sometimes students think their work has to be perfect, and this can be paralyzing,” professor Koszut explains. “But there’s a challenge and a reward in working with your mistakes.”
The materials she used for this particular series, for example, are especially unforgiving.
“I’ll spill paint on the page and force myself to work within that constraint,” she says.
When asked whether Mommy Monsters is completed, professor Koszut admits she’s not sure.
“I think it will always be evolving, but I’m continuing work that focuses on motherhood,” she says.
Her latest piece is a return to working on large-scale panels inspired by the mothering instincts of octopuses. Some octopuses will stay with their eggs until they hatch, after which the mother octopus dies.
“I really went down a rabbit hole on that one,” professor Koszut says, explaining the significance of the specific corals and sea life portrayed in the painting. “It’s about the sacrifices of motherhood — but also the balance between holding on and letting go.”
Motherhood is the theme of an upcoming exhibition at Olivet’s Victorian House Gallery, which will feature professor Koszut’s work as well as that of other artists from across the country.
For professor Koszut, the process of creating art goes hand in hand with shaping the next generation of artists and art educators. It’s important, she emphasizes to her students through her teaching and her own creative process, to honor “being where you are, using everyday experiences as fuel for your own artwork.”
