Sealed Messages

Artist/Instructor: Kathy Shiroki

Fee: Members $25, Not-yet members $40

Participants are encouraged to bring their own supplies, with some materials provided.

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This workshop invites participants to create an artwork that cannot be fully seen. Working with paper, envelopes, and mixed media, participants will compose a message, written, drawn, collaged, or constructed that remains hidden from the viewer. The message, letter, or artwork will be placed inside a handmade envelope, then sealed and framed as the final artwork. The visible artwork is minimal: a sheet of paper holding an envelope, a pocket that contains something private, unreadable, and inaccessible. Meaning exists but cannot be verified. The viewer is left to imagine what has been concealed. The title of the work unleashes what might be inside, offering a clue to the viewer. 

Participants are encouraged to experiment with revealing and hiding, simplicity and complexity, beauty, and intention. What does it mean to make something that resists visibility? What is gained or protected by sealing a message? How does absence function as content, privacy over spectacle? This workshop centers on intimacy, restraint, and the tension between what is shown and what is withheld.

Kathy Gaye Shiroki

Kathy Shiroki’s innovative approach to engaging with art opens new conversations between artists, institutions, and audiences. She has worked in modern and contemporary art museums, creating interactive experiences that activate exhibitions and facilitate hands-on workshops. Kathy currently works in the Education Department at the Burchfield Penney Art Center, where she also serves as the liaison between the Art Center and Buffalo State University. In addition to her museum practice, Kathy is an Adjunct Professor in the Art and Design Department at SUNY Buffalo State, teaching courses ranging from Art Education to Themes and Issues in Contemporary Art. She contributed to the publication Academic Museums: Exhibitions and Education (Museums Etc.), writing on “Peer-to-Peer Tours”, SUNY Buffalo State student-led tours, at the Art Center. Her own installation work has been exhibited nationally, reviewed in The Los Angeles Times, and shown locally at Hallwalls and King Fish Gallery. Kathy Shiroki holds an MFA from the University of California, San Diego, a BFA from Tyler School of Art, and an associate degree from the Rochester Institute of Technology’s School of American Craftsmen.

For Further information, please contact Kathy Shiroki: shirokkg@buffalostate.edu