Following recent attempts at connecting with local artists, Creative Pinellas caught up withæJennifer Kosharek. She opened the doors of her home/studio in St Pete, a space that’s colorful and in a state of constant art production.
During our visit, Kosharek’s 3-year-old son served some delicious homemade cookies — thank you, Scout! She showed me her latest find, a teak African hand that reminded her of Sebastian Coolidge. We talked about everything, from how video games help divert confrontations between siblings, to Mail Art, to her interesting Etsy store, where she doesnäó»t only keep her art, but also a good number of vintage items. Itäó»s äóìa way to lure people to your site, someone who is looking for something vintage, and finds your art or vice versa.”
Kosharekäó»s artistic journey has been in search for the unique. A formally trained artist, she studied at our own Pinellas County Center for the Arts. She can clearly paint realistic portraiture, and has used a series of mediums from intaglio to spraying murals.
She loves originality and gets frustrated with the amount of replication and appropriation on the market today. äóìDonäó»t steal some guy’s work just ’cause he doesnäó»t live in the State,äó she said. Kosharek has to be protective — she’s created an eye-catching, iconic motif that others less talented may co-opt. Her work features recurring feminine forms such as her big-eyed Gretchen dolls, which make her work recognizable among local, national and international collectors.
The motifs continue to evolve, too. äóìI do search through the internet,” she said. “If I come up with an idea, and I look for it and I donäó»t find it, I feel more certain that I should go that route.äó
Back toæMail Art, Kosharek shared that she started her doll face drawings because of it. She showed me her meticulously organized collection of artistic postcards, papers and collages sometimes found on envelopes, stamps, independent stickers, artist-created stamps, etc. Her neatly bundled Mail Art folders encouraged me to read more about the artistic movement that started in the 1960s with Ray Johnson, the father of Mail Art.
An egalitarian way to promote community engagement, Mail Art creates independent art distribution on channels, most of the time for free. Its traditions includeæAdd & Pass, where you send an “object”æproposingæthat it beæchangedæby anotheræMailæArtist, and so it goes down the chain.æMail Art is such a foreign concept for our digital generation. The idea of postal art, of sharing a bit of your work, combines friendship and creativity. It involves networking and creating community by way of dispatching media, and in a way, avoiding the more official channels: galleries, markets or museums. Postal art in a way is the Godfather of the more modern cyber community concept, and even Pinterest. ææææ
Being part of the Mail Artist community has its perks confessed Kosharek, she got to personally meet artist John Held Jr. who among other things, made an Archive for the Smithsonian with more than 11,000 images of Postal Art, which Kosharek was part of. äóìWe Mail Artists get into the back door of a lot of museums,äó she added while talking about a show presented by Mail Artist Mathew Rose,
äóìI was the seventhæperson to contribute to ‘ABAD,’ a mail art-type show, out of about 500 people, and that is archived in the MOMA NYC, MOMA Wales, MOMA Brazil, etc,” she said.
Kosharek herself, through her connections in Mail Art, got to meet Mail Art collectors, historians such as the lateæBill Wilson in New York, who inspired her greatly. Billäó»s mother was May Wilson, a DADA artist with an amazing body of work. Kosharek visited the son’s home in Manhattan.
äóìI got to be in a house with all ofæ her (May Wilson’s) art in it, and Ray Johnson’s art,” she recalled.æ”I met him in 2009 at the “A book about death” opening at the Emily Harvey gallery. … I had no idea who he was, just that he looked like an older gentleman that needed a chair.æ I went and found him one and we became friends. He invited me to his house party the next night.”
Kosharek’s best advice for the artist who wishes to pursue Mail Art: äóìEverything and everyone in the Mail Art world is like worm holes to other dimensions and thereäó»s also lots of wild goose chases… but the good kind where you are enlightened by the journey.äó
Catch up with Jennifer Kosharek and other local favorites at this free event which is part of Et Cultura St Pete 2017 :
Thursday, Nov. 16
8-11 p.m.
