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Ryan Kelly | Episode 522
Ryan W. Kelly has BFA in Ceramics from the Kansas City Art Institute and an MFA from The Ohio State University. Ryan is currently an Assistant Professor of Ceramics and Foundations at Western Washington University. Previously Ryan lived in Philadelphia, where he was a resident artist at The Clay Studio.
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How does one go about good research as a professor to allow their peers to take note?
That is something that I am in the process of discovering. I think within any studio art discipline the research component of your own teaching is your own work and how you are getting it out into the world. I think we are piggy backing off of a larger academic model. Whereas an English professor might be publishing reviews or articles in my case it’s not only the work that I make but where I show that work, whether that is at a regional, local, or national or international venue. And the quality of the venue is indicative of how I am seen within the field. It is kind of a slippery thing. You might be the most talented person in the world but you are not showing your work then in a more academic sense there’s the phrase, publish or perish.
How important is showing your work for getting tenured?
I would say it is very important and I would say for me, I moved to Bellingham. I spent about eight years in Philadelphia and for two years I was teaching at Ohio state and then I moved out here. So all of my connections are way back East and I have been trying to rebuild a community and find new venues and opportunities to show work out here. It is important. If the world doesn’t see my work who know that it exists.
When you are making a series how important is it that the idea is fully formed, the story of what you are trying to chase down before you actually start making the work?
I have spent my whole adult life kind of amassing my interests and my resource imagery and my lines of curiosity and I would say those things coalesce around bodies of work. But I do that in kind of a dream logic. I don’t know that I am exactly illustrating one idea. I’m bringing ideas that I have kind of been mulling on for a long time together. I do my best to make sense of that but there is an illogic to some of what I do. I am bringing together disparate things in a semi-coherent theme. I don’t know if that answers you. (laughter)
Do you feel pressure to be looking for people to bring grants into the school?
So it is a little tricky within the visual arts. Within academia I would say that there is usually internal grants within the university and then grants within the state, if you are going for a national grant those are usually directed more at an individual or probably like an arts non-profit or something like that. So for me, I would say there is pressure for me to be proactive to seek out sources of funding for operations and my programming. I don’t know, there is not a ton of grants out there for visual artists in academia.
How did you find your current teaching job?
Well, let me back track a little bit. I spent about eight years in Philadelphia working odd jobs and one of those odd jobs was teaching. I enjoyed the teaching the most out of all my jobs and an opportunity came up to have a full time one year appointment at Ohio state. So went there and kind of up rooted after eight years and picked up and moved to Columbus Ohio. And knowing that that position would end I needed to be looking for the next step and it was either move back to Philly or move on to something new and maybe more secure. And when this position came up I was excited to move to a new part of the country and also have a go at running my own program and I am really thankful for the opportunity to be able to kind of develop a program.
How important is networking when it comes to finding a teaching job?
I would say it is a large part of every single job that I have ever had in any area. Whether it is an odd job, whether it was a job in another field or whether it was teaching, don’t burn your bridges. Someone that you meet today is going to come back around 5 or ten years from now and might be an ally or say You know, they weren’t so great to work with. So I am always looking to build those bridges. Networking is not the most fun thing to do sometimes, but it you are good to other people hopefully it comes back around.
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