Kelley Meister works as a teaching artist with COMPAS, and at the Science Museum of Minnesota. Kelley teaches stop-motion animation, documentary and narrative filmmaking, digital photography, computer game design, creative circuitry, photographic printmaking, and other technology-infused arts. Kelley’s teaching philosophy is rooted in inquiry, exploration, and process. Merging new technologies with creative thinking and media literacy are 21st-century skills that Kelley believes are critical for every student to practice and develop. In addition to Kelley’s 2008 MFA from Minneapolis College of Art of Design, Kelley has also participated in numerous educator institutes, most notably with the Science Museum of Minnesota’s Teacher Professional Development group: Access and Equity in the Classroom, Minnesota Humanities Center: Increasing Engagement Through Absent Narratives and Educator’s Institute, and YWCA’s How to Talk to Children About Race.
Kelley constructs multimedia installations that fuse sculpture, printmaking and drawing with time-based media such as video, sound-manipulation, and performative or participatory experience. Kelley’s artwork has been shown around the country and abroad in galleries, theatres, online, on the streets, and in impromptu art-spaces, including the Soap Factory (MN), MIX Experimental Film Festival (New York City), Walker Art Center (MN), and the Contemporary Art Museum (St. Louis, MO). Kelley has received awards from the Anderson Center (2014), Jerome Foundation (2010), Metropolitan Regional Arts Council (2015), Minnesota State Arts Board (2014, 2016), Minneapolis College of Art and Design (2008), New York Mills Regional Cultural Center (2012), Savannah College of Art and Design (2002), Tofte Lake Center (2013), and the Vermont Studio Center (2014).
More About the Artist
Learn more about Kelley in April 2016’s Artist Spotlight interview.
Program Offerings
Virtual and Remote Programs
Art Kit: Mini (Low-Tech) Movies
Make your own thaumatropes, or mini movies, at home with this art kit that includes all the supplies and instructions you need to create your own mini-movie! Some say the earliest movies were cave paintings, such as the ones in Lascaux. These drawings of repeated animals, slightly varied, appear to move when a candle or fire flickers light across them. This trick of movement is similar to how movies were invented. And before the first films, in the mid-19th century, there were many parlor games, like the thaumatrope, that utilized that same trick to see movement. Explore the low tech origins of the movie with this creative kit.
Residencies
Digital Storytelling
Students will work in small groups or individually to create nonfictional digital storytelling pieces based on stories in their own lives. They will use iMovie or similar nonlinear editing software; Garage Band or similar audio editing software; and digital video cameras to construct their stories.
At the beginning of this residency, students familiarize themselves with camera basics. In teams, students find things to film that convey the image, idea, or metaphor of specific words. Next, they participate in story circles or brainstorm individually and turn their stories into a plan for a film. The stories can be abstract, narrative, poetic or metaphorical. Lessons in storyboarding, composition and camera movement prepare students for video production. Students record their audio and images and complete the video editing work. Throughout the production and post-production process, students receive ongoing artist and peer feedback. The final session involves a film screening and artist-facilitated discussion on what they learned throughout the process.
Note: Digital Storytelling works best as an extended residency model, allowing three weeks to complete the project.
Theater of Shadows
Connect a circuit, light up an LED, and make a miniature stage for your puppet show! Students create their own shadow puppet boxes and learn the basics of circuitry with LEDs as they make them glow. Engineering skills are employed as students decide the best way to create moving tracks for their puppets and where best to place their light.
Movie Magic
Students work in small groups to create, shoot, and edit their own fictional films. Students start with a unique brainstorming process that brings together ideas from all the members of the group to create the nugget of their film. They then work together to make their storyboard and write scripts, gather and create props and costumes, and develop their movie idea. Students use digital video cameras to film their movies then edit them using iMovie or other similar nonlinear editing software. The completion of the residency includes a screening event to share the movies with the rest of the class or even the whole school. Optional: students can create their own soundtrack for the film using Garageband or other similar sound editing software.
Note: Movie Magic works best as an extended residency model, allowing two or three weeks to complete the project.
Sunny Science: Cyanotype Sun Prints
Using cyanotypes, a simple, nontoxic photographic process that uses the sun for exposure and water as developer, students explore how UV light from the sun can create art. For the residency, students will explore an iterative process (like engineering!) and create multiple paper cyanotypes as they explore different ways of making an image and how to get the effects they want. Students will create their cyanotype print using drawings, paper cut-outs, objects from nature, their bodies, and/or other opaque objects. Students will contribute 1 print each to a large mural-sized piece for the school to keep and can keep the other ones. Optionally, students will explore acid and alkaline baths for the finished prints to change the colors and alter the cyanotypes. Another add-on is to try the cyanotype process on fabric with each student creating a wearable cyanotype T-shirt to take home!
Envisioning Creativity in the Community through Media Arts
In this media arts residency, students learn to recognize the value and variety of creative thinking as they explore documentary media practices. Classes set out with a broad task: to discover the ways their community uses creativity in their lives. Students prepare by envisioning all of the ways they use creativity in their own lives. They then come up with a short list of questions for community members to consider. Students then venture out to take photos and/or short videos of the members of their community talking about and demonstrating their creative skills at work. Students then further develop their media skills as they work to create a slideshow of their images and/or short videos. This final media piece is then available for screening at the school and in the community. Individual students can also either take home copies or download them at home.
Dream Remix
Students learn and practice their new editing skills in this week-long residency when they make mash-ups, remixes, or music videos. Using artist-provided digitized old 16mm films, silent cartoons, and other fun copyright-free material, students chop, cut, paste, repeat, and rearrange as they familiarize themselves with nonlinear editing software. Students add in music and sound effects, special video effects, and titles and credits later in the week. On the final day, the movies are screened for all to experience.
Workshops
Visual Scavenger Hunt
In this workshop students can identify and connect with the way they see the world around them through creativity. At the beginning of the session, students will be given a scavenger hunt sheet with words they must define through pictures. With a camera, they will then explore the school and surrounding area, learning beginning photography techniques and capturing images that they think define each word. After students finish the hunt, their images will be printed out and posted to a bulletin board containing the same words as the scavenger hunt sheet. Once posted, students can compare and contrast the images their classmates have used to define each word fostering a discussion on perspective, creativity, image, idea, and more.
Mini (Low-Tech) Movies!
Some say the earliest movies were cave paintings, such as the ones in Lascaux. These drawings of repeated animals, slightly varied, appear to move when a candle or fire flickers light across them. This trick of movement is similar to how movies were invented. And before the first films, in the mid-19th century, there were many parlor games that utilized that same trick to see movement. Make zoetropes, thaumatropes, and/or phenokistoscopes with the artist in this workshop that explores the origin of movies. Take home a mini low-tech movie to share with friends and family!
Low-Tech Photography: Cyanotype Sun Prints
Using cyanotypes, a simple, nontoxic photographic process that uses the sun for exposure and water as developer, participants explore how UV light from the sun can create art. For the workshop, participants will create a single paper cyanotype print to take home using drawings, paper cut-outs, objects from nature, their bodies, and/or other opaque objects.
Theater of Shadows
Connect a circuit, light up an LED, and make a miniature stage for your puppet show! Students create their own shadow puppet boxes and learn the basics of circuitry with LEDs as they make them glow. Engineering skills are employed as students decide the best way to create moving tracks for their puppets and where best to place their light.
Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Card
Dress up your next Thank You card! Make a simple circuit on paper to light up an LED. Decorate around the light on the other side to make a card to pass along to friends and family.
Party Gifs!
Take photos of original drawings, photo collages, or even your lunch being eaten. Assemble them using online software in a quick, fun animated image called a Gif. Share them with friend and family!