June 5 – June 27
Kaleena Stasiak is an interdisciplinary artist who uses an assortment of haptic media to explore collective mythmaking, and its relevance to the present day. In her recent body of work, she has been creating lawn ornaments to explore the historic and contemporary overlap of domesticity, gender roles, ornamentation, and function. While garden decorations such as whirligigs and windsocks are steeped in history and collective meaning, they are also outward expressions of an individual’s relationship to our past. The front yard becomes a public art gallery, exploring the nuances of regional and personal identity through symbols. For her, making becomes an act of historical role playing as she imagines, produces, and curates the objects in her yard. Since constructing her first whirligigs and windsocks Stasiak has been eager to continue to realize other ideas and forms stemming from this object-oriented line of inquiry. With her time at KIAC, she plans to produce pinwheels and other kinetic lawn ornaments incorporating assemblages of found objects and punched tin. She also intends to create a series of hand-painted silk kites, another functional and recreational item that utilizes air movement. Stasiak is looking forward to learning more about Dawson City’s history with the Klondike Gold Rush that will be incorporated into the decoration of this new collection of outdated utilitarian objects, which now serve as kitsch reminders of historical industry.