Forging Her Creative Path
A fellowship assists alumna Kiernan Pazdar’s return to RISD to pursue an MFA and expand her creative practice.
Dancing wallpaper patterns. Swirling fluorescent brushstrokes. Kiernan Pazdar 14 TX/MFA 20 PT creates paintings that are in motion. “I think of painting pretty romantically,” she says. “It’s a flexible and direct medium that can become anything.”
Just like her work, Pazdar is always moving forward and pushing creative boundaries. After attending RISD as an undergraduate majoring in Textiles, she worked as a textile designer before committing full time to her painting practice. In 2018, she decided to return to RISD to pursue an MFA in Painting. “The work being made here felt very connected to the way I had been working on my own,” she explains.
Back on campus she has made important connections with mentors and peers. “As an MFA student I have a much closer working relationship with my professors and the visiting artists,” she says. Having taken the plunge, she is enjoying being challenged by new ways of thinking about and approaching art. “There is a focus on theory that has expanded the type of research I now expect from myself,” she says. But she did not take the decision to continue her studies lightly. Receiving the Roger and Gayle Mandle Fellowship relieves some of her financial stress.
“I couldn’t have come without it,” she says. “Returning to school has been a huge leap of faith, especially after working as an artist for a few years.”
The Mandle Fellowship is awarded on the basis of financial need and artistic talent to one or more graduate students pursuing an MFA in Painting. Former RISD president Roger Mandle (who served from 1993 to 2008) and his wife established the fellowship. “Gayle and I are keenly aware that talent knows no economic boundaries. Support for graduate students is especially important because many of the neediest students have expended their financial capacity pursuing an undergraduate degree,” says Mandle.
In addition to her graduate studies, Pazdar now has the opportunity to build her pedagogical practice. “I have a teaching assistantship, which has been one of my favorite parts of being back in school,” she adds. “I love working one-on-one with students to help them develop their ideas and figure out how their passions can be brought into their work.”
One day, she hopes to find a balance between careers as a professor and artist. Regardless of the journey she takes, Pazdar is adamant about moving her creative momentum forward. “No matter what happens,” she says, “I will continue to make art.”
written by Dan Hitchen, CASE intern
photos by Jo Sittenfeld MFA 08 PH
