Melissa Raman Molitor

Associate Professor, Adj., Art Therapy and Counseling

thirdspacearts.com

Melissa Raman Molitor has been teaching at SAIC since 2003. She took her sabbatical during the 2020 Academic Year.

Melissa is an Associate Professor, Adj. at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) and a founding director of Kids Create Change, a non-profit organization dedicated to advancing social justice learning in young people through the arts. She is the founder of the Kitchen Table Stories Project, an initiative created to increase the visibility and representation of the local Asian, South Asian, Pacific Islander American community and amplify the stories that center their histories and lived experiences. Melissa was awarded the 2021-2022 Curatorial Fellowship at the Evanston Art Center, and currently serves on the Evanston City Arts Council. She holds a BA in Psychology and a BFA with a concentration in ceramics and photography from the University of Michigan. She received an MA in Art Therapy from SAIC and is a registered, board-certified art therapist and licensed clinical professional counselor.

Melissa’s art and professional practices coalesce in the creation of liminal spaces that employ art as a form of critical consciousness and healing justice. Her art making involves the exploration of personal and collective identity through fibers and assemblage. Informed by traditional art and ritual practices her work explores the mapping of cross-cultural journeys and the process of creative placemaking. Her therapeutic work draws on the power of art in fostering human connection and community care, and employing multimedia to engage people in discourse and action towards racial equity and social justice.

Education

1999 MAAT, School of the Art Institute of Chicago
1997 BA/BFA, University of Michigan

Notable Classes Taught:

Ritual and Art Making in Healing
Becoming Human: Evolving Conceptions of Human Development
Graduate Thesis I and II
Art Therapy Fieldwork I and II
Art Therapy Graduate Projects

More info:

An Inside Look at ASPA Heritage Month in Evanston
“Holding space” in history, The Kitchen Table Stories Project sheds light on the ASPA experience in Evanston
Kapwa & Kapé event brings live music, poetry and art to Evanston for Filipino American History Month
Kids Create Change
Press Release for the Placemaking Project
Spotlight on the Kitchen Table Stories Project
Kitchen Table Stories Project

Sabbatical Reflection

I am a first generation South Asian Pacific Islander American of Filipinx and Indian descent, a cisgender able-bodied woman, a US born citizen, the daughter of immigrants, a descendant of healers, a working mother to mixed race children, a feminist-activist, caregiver, mental health practitioner, educator, socially engaged artist, and scholar in terms not defined by a white, colonial, patriarchal, academic system, but by womxn storytellers, cultural weavers and social framers.

My work explores the visual, performative and culinary arts as acts of disruption, solidarity and care. I seek to create spaces in my community where art making and creative engagement are forms of critical consciousness and healing justice. Spaces that exist in between and outside of the ‘norm’ and center non-dominant stories that are often silenced or go unheard.

The Story Table embodies the act of passing ancestral wisdom and traditions, healing practices, ritual customs and familial stories from generation to generation in an effort to preserve culture. Embedded in the table are personal artifacts that serve as an archive of my family history and a map of our immigrant journey. The creation of the table (constructed with the assistance of woodworker Ron Cramer) was a ritual in itself – choosing, placing, and encasing each object in a way that both unearths intimate accounts and honors lived experiences. The process of creating the piece involved the physical and psychological pain of grief and loss, a recognition of intergenerational resilience, a reclamation of power, and a catharsis that can only be met with love and hope. The woven pieces, sculptural items, and found objects presented with the Story Table offer touch points in the narrative that was created for this space.

The Story Table, which was introduced in summer 2022 as part of the Kitchen Table Stories exhibition, will travel from this current site to several locations throughout the city serving as a platform for engaging others to share stories that reveal and celebrate the many intersections of identity and human interconnectedness.

-Melissa Raman Molitor, Associate Professor, Adj., Art Therapy and Counseling