The Linda A. Day Endowed Student Award

 

Kayleigh Ziehler-Martin

2023 Linda A. Day Endowed Student Award Recipient

Born and raised in Pasadena, CA, Kayleigh Ziehler-Martin received her BFA from San Francisco Art Institute after which she spent four years in Kochi, Japan, teaching English and expanding her practice. Her tendency from a young age to collect and document has led to an ever-expanding archive of images and materials that serve as both a visual and sensory wellspring for her practice. This weaving of painting, photography, and sentimental elements reveal her broader interest in language, time, sensation, and neurological activity.

Ziehler-Martin has exhibited in the Bay Area and Los Angeles. Her most recent group exhibitions include the 2023 Now Trending Alpay Scholarship Exhibition at Palos Verdes Art Center, All Media 2023 at the Irvine Fine Arts Center, and Fragments at the Long Beach Creative Group Gallery, as well as several exhibitions in the CSULB School of Art Galleries.

Neutral Network, 53x36”, 2023 Acrylic, gouache, caraan d’ache, sumi ink, photo transfers on paper

Optic Chiasma, 50”x37”, 2022 Oil, acrylic, fiber, photos on fabric, thread, needle

Tracing Rivers, 19”x22”, 2023 Oil, gouache, sewing pattern, photo transfer, thread

Artist Statement

My practice is built on the belief that mark-making can be equal parts emotional and analytical. I use a language of wayfinding to navigate a mixed-media cycle of active awareness and world-building.

Records in the form of snapshots, mementos, and studio scraps are de/reconstructed to reveal systems of emotion, structure, intention, and intuition. Painting enters the fold as action, repetitive and deliberate, allowing me to suspend time and revisit spaces sensorily. “Place” is shifted, angled, and reconfigured. Process rules, as action and reaction form a kind of call and response. 

Lines between mediums are blurred – stitches become strokes, strokes become veins. Fabrics and pigments imprint on one another. Photographs catch and release light. Light becomes the inhale and exhale of breath. Where, when, or why becomes altered; the works that unfold offer an opportunity to add your own footnotes, surveying techniques, and personal experiences as surrogate narratives.