Mychaelyn Michalec
Many artists explore and capture beauty and inspiration in the repetitive and mundane tasks and experiences of modern living; not many artists use what is an everyday object as their chosen medium to portray their message. Mychaelyn Michalec combines old and new technology to create scenes capturing everyday life, exploring home life and notions of “high art.”
Mychaelyn Michalec is an artist whose work depicts ultramodern matters of domestic life. For many art is about meaning or a message, but for her it is about a daily practice, covertly documenting what is happening using her cell phone. Those images are used to make drawings which are translated into paintings and rugs. She is interested in technology and distraction and the aesthetic of the everyday and domestic labor. She has exhibited widely at national and international venues such as Krasl Arts Center, MI, Purdue University Rueff Galleries, IN and Custom House Gallery, Edinburgh, Scotland. Her work has been published in Art Maze, Friend of the Artist and Create Magazine. She currently lives and works in Dayton, OH.
Mychaelyn describes her work and process:
My practice as an artist attends to the aesthetics of the everyday and domestic labor. I document my domestic life by secretly photographing what is going on using my phone. Those photos are used to create the drawings in my work. Recently, I have moved from creating large scale paintings of domestic life, to using an industrial carpet tufting gun to create rug drawings from yarn that are stretched on a frame like a painting.
While domestic is usually defined as human habitations, or relating to the household or family, there is an additional definition which my work is often about; devoted to home duties and pleasures. My work is a less romanticized and saccharine view of domestic relationships but still speak to the definitions of home duties and pleasures.
The subject of domestic life is still marginalized as lesser and feminine. But I have come to embrace both in subject and technique. Using a domestic task or craft such as rug making is often defined as “women’s work”; believed to be exclusively the domain of women and associates particular stereotypical tasks that history has associated with the female gender. These tasks are generally not considered ‘high art’ by the art world. My work lives somewhere between those two realms of ‘high art’ and the domestic. Just as I, as both a mother and an artist, find myself trying to navigate between these two realms.
Originally published 11/5/2019
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