The wonderful KT Gorzek talked to me this week about the ways she’s involved on campus. A junior at Augie, KT is double majoring in Art History and English with an Art minor. A fan of overalls, film photography, and all things zodiac, this Pisces girl has a bright future ahead of her.
Why did you apply to the The Excellence in Liberal Arts Award? I know you just received that recently.
I saw it was about the humanities and I love everything about the humanities so I thought ”maybe I have a shot at this.” I really don’t do anything STEM related at all and the arts have always been very important to me. Before I even started college, I would write papers on art history topics. My senior paper for English was about Ezra Pound and Kandinski and synesthesia in Modernism. I just had to write a 500 word essay and type out achievements and involvements to apply.
What are you involved in that helped you receive the award?
I’m one of the Cool Beanz art curators (Augustana students’ artwork is displayed in the coffee shop), I’m the Vice President of the Art History Club and have been involved with that for three years now, I work in the costume shop on campus as well as the Whistler center.
Let’s talk about the Whistler center!
I started that freshman year with Dr. Goebel. I started out transcribing primary sources from these scrapbooks that James Whistler collected. Every time he was in the paper he would collect a news clipping about himself and put it in a scrapbook. The problem is though, newspaper is not made to last. It’s made out of an acid based substance and over time it will dissolve. He used an acid based glue to put the acid based newspaper onto another sheet of acid based scrapbook paper. So overtime they’re going to be gone. We’ve been typing them up so that we can put them on a database that will be online for anybody who wants to do scholarly research.
Where are the scrapbooks all from?
All over the world. There’s some from Glasgow, Library of Congress, the Freer museum, etc. We have photo scans or photographs of the originals that we’re working off of.
What else have you been doing there?
Also, this year, I’ve starting working on Dr. Goebel’s dissertation. Carli Hogan and I are working on it right now together. They scanned it into a computer then Carli formatted it and now we’re going back through and spell checking everything to make make sure it’s okay. We have to make sure it’s the same as her original. She wrote it on a typewriter!
What did you originally come into college thinking you’d major in?
I had no idea. I thought I’d maybe do Statistics. I really like statistics and I think math is incredible. I really respect people who are way better at it than me. I thought about Art Therapy for a while too.
Why Art History?
Looking back it’s more obvious, I guess. I think “wow, how did I not know I wanted to do this all along?” I hate Tumblr now, but I would go on Tumblr and try to memorize the styles of different artists and then scroll through and cover up the info and try to guess whose piece it was. I’d quiz myself all the time in high school. I finally took an art history class- I took nonwestern or some other 100 level class and it was SO FUN. Then I took another one with Dr. Morse and I was like “what?! This exists?! How did I not know?” And I just cared about it. You know that feeling when you just really care about something? I got that and I knew- this is what I want to do.
Do you have a favorite artist?
You’ll have to narrow that down to a period! I admire different periods for different things. I just took a Baroque Art History class and I didn’t really like Baroque art before that, but it made me appreciate it a lot more. So from that period, I like Anthony van Dyck. I even wrote a paper on him.
No, you know what I love? The Harlem Renaissance. To me, that is so interesting and I’ve written two papers about it. I wrote one specifically on Aaron Douglas who had this art style that was called “Afro-Deco.”
During the Modernist period artists like Picasso and Matisse were looking at African masks and collecting artifacts- it was a little fetishing- but that gave Aaron Douglas access to things that were applicable to his life because he’s a black artist. Then he took that and combined it with modern styles like art deco and made his own thing and was able to represent his culture, but also make it modern and present blacks as sophisticated and important and contributing society rather than ex-slaves.
What do you do in your free time?
I like to read, cook, and (obviously) sew.
What’s your favorite medium?
Printmaking. I just recently did a print of my mom and I (pictured below).
Thank you KT! It was a pleasure talking with you!