Art with a message
Instructor Profile: Fresno City College Instructor Kathy Wosika
Kathy Wosika, art instructor at Fresno City College
When Fresno City College (FCC) Art Instructor Kathy Wosika returned from her trip last year to the African nation of Ghana, she brought back home more than just photographs and memories. She brought back some of her trash. But it was all with the intention of creating art with a message.
Kathy, who has taught art at FCC since 1975, was in Ghana for five weeks during her sabbatical leave. She was working on a papermaking project at Aba House, a non-profit art collaborative located in a small fishing village in Nungua, Ghana, where the people are incredibly poor and do not have the services they need. “A lot of the kids and their families basically were squatters in shells of houses that had been started in the neighborhood but abandoned,” recalled Kathy. The art collaborative included making paper out of a local plant to make stationery and books. Volunteers like Kathy then sell the books and raise funds for school supplies and shoes for the children.
“Whenever I travel, I try to incorporate what I’ve learned from this very, very different place and this very, very different experience into life at home.” – Kathy Wosika
The drinking water in the village is sold in small plastic pouches that are usually just thrown to the ground after they are used. Since trash collecting is not an available service, these plastic pouches litter the ground. Kathy saved all the plastic bags from her drinking water for the entire five weeks and decided to make a creative piece contrasting natural materials and recycled products to make a statement about the environment.
“Whenever I travel, I try to incorporate what I’ve learned from this very, very different place and this very, very different experience into life at home. This time it was clearly that idea of paper or plastic. Here I was, working with this natural paper making process while in the midst of all this trash and plastic. It was a tremendous contrast to try to make sense of,” said Kathy. Out of this experience was born “Plastic or Paper,” a multimedia exhibit that showed at Fresno’s Gallery.
Kathy Wosika with children from Ghana
Her message is clear: Kathy wants to raise awareness of the severe problem that other countries face with respect to controlling their own trash problem and dealing with recycling. Her students will benefit from the journey as she incorporates what she learned into her lessons. As for the books from Ghana, Kathy has generated more than $400 in sales here in Fresno. “It will buy a whole year’s worth of school supplies and shoes in Ghana,” she said.
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