Visiting Artist Helps Others “Channel Emotions Through Art”
For about 25 years visiting artist Traci Molloy has been working with adolescents and young adults who have survived trauma of all kinds — ranging from sexual assault to genocide to 9/11 — to create large-scale, multimedia pieces. Five of her pieces are in the permanent collection of the National September 11 Memorial and Museum in New York.
“What I’ve found is art is its own language, and when you have experienced something that is fairly horrific, sometimes you can't talk about it ... but you can channel your emotions through art,” Ms. Molloy said. “[Art] provides a platform for people to speak ... Over and over, I have found the folks I work with feel a sense of relief, feel a sense of community, and just feel loved and seen and heard, and that validation is just so powerful.”
Traci does some solo work, too, such as painting, but there is a difference. Working with people, helping people, brings another layer of meaning to her work. She also has worked with underserved populations.
“I don’t know how to be an artist any other way,” Ms. Molloy said. “When I work with other people, it is like the best of humanity ... I make my own work, but my own work is pale in comparison to these collaborations. I find that as an artist I thrive working with other people because it is a chance to be a teacher, a chance to be an activist, a chance to be an artist. I am all those things — and it is very hard just to be the artist.”
This week Ms. Molloy is working in the Richmond Art Center (RAC) as part of the Adolf and Virginia Dehn Visiting Artist program. On Friday night, January 17, she will lead a workshop from 6 to 7 p.m. in the RAC that is open to all students, faculty, and staff at Loomis Chaffee. Participants will create art that celebrates Martin Luther King’s legacy of activism and non-violence. They will make watercolor paintings using passages from Dr. King’s final speech, “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop,” as a source of inspiration. Music from the civil rights era will be played, and a reflection and conversation will take place at the end.
The individual paintings from the workshop will be put together to form a large-scale work, which will be given to the school, Ms. Molloy said. Dr. King’s “mountaintop” speech was delivered on April 3, 1968, in Memphis, Tenn. He was assassinated the next day.
Dr. King, Ms. Molloy said, “paved the way for almost anyone who would consider themselves involved in social justice.” This is a way to say thank you, she said.
“I hope on Friday the kids have fun, get a chance to make art and express themselves,” Ms. Molloy said. “Sometimes I think we need to reflect, so being able to make art gives folks the opportunity to reflect on his legacy, his teachings, all he did, and then think about the different ways [they] can make an impact. Sometimes we have to make an impact by being really active and really loud and vocal, and sometimes we have to take care of ourselves because if we are not healthy and of sound mind, we can’t go do the other hard work.” She said she sees Friday’s workshop as a “chance to calm our bodies down” for the work ahead.
"The Feathers of the Phoenix," 2006, which will be featured in the February show at the National September 11 Memorial and Museum in New York. Traci worked with children at America's Camp in the Berkshires in Massachusetts on large-scale projects. The summer camp, which was open for 10 years starting in 2002, was for kids who lost family members in the 9/11 attacks.
An exhibit that will include Ms. Molloy’s work is coming to the National September 11 Memorial and Museum in New York in February. Ms. Molloy said the show will run for more than a year and will include work that involves response to the trauma of 9/11 from children around the world. She has recorded audio about her work, and the main narration of the show comes from the actor Robert DeNiro.
Ms. Molloy always knew she wanted to be an artist; she just was not sure what form it would take. “I was the kid in school who loved to draw,” she said.
She also was the kid who loved athletics and played soccer in high school and college. The 1988 Alfred University soccer team on which she played has been recognized by the university’s Athletics Hall of Fame as a team of distinction. The 1988 team was the first Alfred women’s soccer team to make the NCAA Tournament. Ms. Molloy holds a bachelor's degree in fine arts from Alfred and a master's degree in fine arts education from Ohio University. Ms. Molloy went on to coach the sport as an assistant at Williams College, then as coach of the Ohio University club team. While at Ohio University, she was offered a job at another school but turned it down.
“I knew if I went, that would be it,” she said. “I was going to be a soccer coach.”
Yet all that experience in athletics has contributed to her career. She said that because of playing and coaching sports she gained skills as a collaborator and facilitator. “So many of my projects are about raising the ability of other people and making them feel comfortable as an artist, and that is similar to coaching,” Ms. Molloy said. “You take all your players who have different skills, and you try to figure out how to let them all shine so your team can be successful.”
Ms. Molloy’s collaborations have been exhibited in many places, including at the United Nations in New York City; the Pentagon outside Washington, D.C.; the Centers for Disease Control’s Global Health Odyssey Museum in Atlanta, Ga.; the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Mass.
In March at the September 11 Museum, Ms. Molloy will participate in a panel discussion. She said she will be talking with a woman who was 10 when Ms. Molloy first met her and now is in her 30s. The woman’s father died in 9/11. They will be talking about “the power of art and how transformative it has been for her” and others, Ms. Molloy said.
She often refers to those she has worked with as “my kids.” They are grown now, Ms. Molloy said, but “they always will be my kids.”