Credit: Contributed
Credit: Contributed
Michalec’s work is painterly in composition, but is made of fiber in the needle punching technique. By using a rug tufting gun and a punch needle, her work combines traditionally female craft practices with the grit needed to confront and question social norms.
Michalec, 47, who grew up in Newton Falls, has called Boston, Washington D.C., and Columbus home. A professional artist who chooses to work in Dayton, she is represented by three galleries — K Contemporary in Denver, Sarah Gormley in Columbus, and CAMP Gallery in Miami.
“Everybody’s story is different, but for me, it took a lot of networking and using social media to show my work in order to get galleries interested,” she reflects. “All the people I shared studios with went to New York and still live there. I was the only one who made the choice to get married and have kids, which really changed my trajectory.” Michalec took a studio practice break while raising her children, now 16 and 19.
“The women in my family showed me how to embroider. I learned to knit because it was the thing that kept me sane when I had no other creative practice. The rug tufting is something that I taught myself. I was looking for a craft process that had the same feeling as painting. To me, it’s still painting, but I feel like I’m a better painter using yarn. There’s a preciousness to the paint that I couldn’t get over, but yarn and thread was always around. There was a comfortability. Even though wool is really expensive,” she said.
Credit: Hannah Kasper
Credit: Hannah Kasper
“The work that I did at The Contemporary Dayton (in 2021) was a lot about life during Covid, and gendered and emotional labor during that shutdown time. That really changed my work — it was an evaluation of self, and was liberating. That was when galleries started to notice.”
“People are all going through a variety of things and I don’t need to pretend that everything is okay all of the time. Sometimes it’s not. I think that getting divorced really did change my work because it empowered me to not have any censors on my art.”
GROUNDHOG DAY
“Every day is Groundhog’s Day for me. I get up at 8:00 and make my coffee. I do my New York Times puzzles.”
THE BUSINESS OF ART
“Then I have the ‘Business of Art’ which is being on a computer, doing applications. A lot of stuff isn’t super fun, like applying for grants and residencies. I send updated portfolios to galleries or to people that I’m trying to connect with.”
MORNING REFLECTION
“I come out to the studio almost every day around 10 o’clock. I like to sit here and consider what I’m doing even if I’m not actively in the process of making something. To be in the space, and stare at what you’re working on, is important.”
FUZZIES
“I recently cleaned because it was like a garbage heap and there were so many sheep fuzzies. My Shop-Vac is hilarious because it is just full of yarn scraps and wool. For a while I was collecting the little bits I cut off to spin into yarn. I went to yarn school in Kansas in an old rural school building and learned how to spin and dye and card yarn. You stayed in the old school classrooms, the science lab is where you did all the dying, the gymnasium is where we would set up the carding machine. There were tons of spinning wheels and learning how to spin fiber.”
Credit: Contributed
Credit: Contributed
MYTHOLOGY OF BIRDS
“There are big chunks of time where I’m on my phone or computer, researching references from art history. All these collections are online, like the Met and Tate, if I’m looking for something in particular. A lot of birds lately. It’s symbolic for me; Birds are emblematic of freedom but they’re also a signifier of domestication and captivity. That and mythology about birds. For a while I was looking at every rendition of ‘Leda and the Swan’. I’m thinking about autonomy of our bodies and how much control we have over our own choices.”
INNER DIALOGUE
“I make these huge research piles of images. I use a Lightbox and work from the photos and make tons of drawings. I use a form of Photoshop and merge them together. It’s usually a dialogue between a bunch of different images of my body combined with images from art history.”
THOUSANDS OF YARDS
“I take the final drawing and then I project it. There are thousands of yards of material in one work. Something that’s 6 feet by 6 feet might have 12 or 14 cones of yarn. A cone might have 1,000 yards on it. Luckily through Montgomery County I got two different grants and it allowed me to have assistants. I’ve worked with Sinclair, too. They have artists that are looking for internships as part of their program.”
MY ISLAND
“I take a lunch break at home and binge watch something awful. I refer to this whole area as ‘my island’ and I say things like ‘I haven’t left the island in days’. I will order lunch to be delivered. It’s awful because I’m so close to UD and the downtown area. I think it’s because I don’t want to ruin the flow so I’ll order Taqueria Mixteca from a three minute drive away (laughs).”
REKINDLING JOY
“I stay out here in the studio forever. Then Franklin and I take a walk around South Park. I used to be super into cooking dinner, and then it became some sort of terrible (domestic) obligation. Since I moved in here two years ago, I’m trying to rekindle the joy of some of those things. I really do love to cook, but I don’t have to do it every day now, or in a very strict certain way.”
A GIVEN
“I go to the Silver Slipper every week. Sometimes more than that! That is a given. I love the people that run it. It’s a great spot to see local friends and neighbors. If it’s summer, it’s always the Aperol Spritz. If it’s winter or fall, it’s their house martini.”
REST AND RESEARCH
“I am a night owl. I love short story fiction. I’m a big Joyce Carol Oates, Lydia Davis, Raymond Carver sort of person. The other reading I do is non-fiction. What I’ve been doing a lot of research on lately is historical treatments for hysteria, and the fact that until 1980 it was still considered a medical diagnosis. Every time a woman shows any sort of emotion, it’s labeled as hysteria, when really, we are the emotionally intelligent beings that can process emotions! A lot of my reading comes from the online collections of the Lloyd Library in Cincinnati. It has these old botany medicinal books.
I tend to have a beer and stay up until 1 or 2, doing dumb stuff like doom-scrolling social media and then really regretting it (laughs).”
“I’ve been around a little bit, but Ohio is some weird vortex. If you’re from here, it keeps sucking you back in.”
MORE DETAILS
Mychaelyn Michalec has mounted recent solo exhibitions at K Contemporary Denver in Colorado and at the Weston Gallery in Cincinnati. She was recently included in the “Riveting: Women Artists from the Sara M. and Michelle Vance Waddell Collection” at the Dayton Art Institute. For more info visit the artist’s website at www.mychaelynmichalec.com or on Instagram @mymychaelyn.
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