Ariel Kessler - Mixed Media Art
551 Tremont Street – BCA Studio #204
www.arielkessler.com
@ariel.kessler
www.facebook.com/arielkesslerart
Ariel Kessler is a collector of stories.
Her mixed media art encompass lively, colorful imagery in a whimsical world. She is inspired by children’s book authors and illustrators.
In contrast, her photography lets viewers into her private self. Quiet, haunting and evocative. Ariel finds inspiration from 20th century female photographers.
By working in mixed media, these two sides can merge.
At a young age Ariel developed a fondness for painting, printmaking and photography and was mentored by Boston-based artist, Evelyn Berde. She built her first darkroom at twelve years of age. While using her late father’s Nikon F, she took photographs wherever she went. At eighteen, she moved to New York City to attend the School of Visual Arts. There she became enraptured with small camera, street-like photography. After two years focusing on this style, she moved back to her hometown of Boston to attend the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, where she was mentored by some of the masters of the large-format camera and was given the opportunity to work with the infamous Polaroid 20×24 camera. She graduated with her BFA in 2010. She has studied advanced alternative photographic processes in Santa Fe, New Mexico and Savannah, Georgia.
In 2019, Ariel was invited to be an artist in residence at the Fish Factory Creative Centre of Stöðvarfjörður, Iceland.
While Ariel’s college education has been in photography, combining other traditional art mediums with an emphasis of the mark of the hand have always been a passion and the basis of her work. Utilizing found imagery and papers with painting and printmaking, Ariel has found her stride in her art making.
In October 2020, Ariel will be an artist in residence at The Ou Gallery in Vancouver Island, Canada.
Ariel Kessler has exhibited her work all over the United States, and internationally in Mexico and Japan.
Her work can be found in public and private collections throughout the world.
Ariel lives and works in Watertown, Massachusetts and spends her days working in her studio and traveling throughout the East coast doing shows, exhibiting and selling her work.
