Kristyn Bat Lopez
Art education has been the critical focus of my professional practice since 2007. exploring materials and processes with students and other community members has allowed me to develop meaning through a variety of media and learning environments. i've spent summer camp seasons in bright, shiny museums and boggy, bug-filled state parks, afternoons spent making art with young residents in shelters as well as on the basketball court coaching cheerleading. these positions represent only a few aspects of the wild and boundless possibility of youth empowerment. as a professional tattooer since 2009, staying curious about the many entanglements of this craft is likely to be a lifelong pursuit. my current tattoo home, LA GRANDE TATTOO, is dedicated to being an inclusive and open space for the magic of tattoo art. when i paused graduate studies in 2016 prior to the birth of my first child, it was with the understanding that i was leaving the university community and the classroom committed to my new life as a parent. i knew i had to keep working through this new lens - to find other, more accessible, equitable, and responsive ways of learning and generating knowledge. it's a ridiculously trite cliché, but my "job" as Mama has been the most challenging, humbling and radicalizing. parenting is a process that transformed my passion into MISSION.
In 2017, i started WAYFARING PAINTER, a 501c3 nonprofit arts organization with a focus on engaging the Gainesville, Florida community with accessible, contemporary artmaking practice. this work was closely entwined with my graduate research at the University of Florida, which focused on development of community art practices that seek to mitigate political polarization and social disconnect. i want to investigate the spaces where faith, art and activism overlap and ask what a feminist, interfaith art education could look like. how can i get the Jesus kids and the art school kids in the same room to create work together and develop restorative understandings of community through new materialist approaches? uh, i mean, by PLAYING and MAKING and eating pizza together. in the words of CORITA KENT, "to create is to relate." no more internet comment wars. no more saying "no child left behind" or "all lives matter" without looking deeply at what "left behind" and "matter" really mean. as of fall 2022, i am expanding the horizons of this project into a doctoral research project at the Institute of Political Science and Sociology, University of Bonn. i am curious to compare the role of the state across different welfare regimes in arts and cultural policy, how state religious policy comes into play, and how artists and organizations function within and against the institution in promoting social cohesion and social change. all that aside, can we just paint or watch a game, make some zines together and figure it out, please? bring your kids.
