Cleveland Heights Resident Competes on Bravo’s ‘Work of Art’

Applying to be on a reality show is not something Sarah Kabot would normally consider.

But the Cleveland Institute of Art professor said when Megan Lykins Reich, curator at MOCA, told her about the opportunity to be on the second season of Bravo’s Work of Art: The Next Great Artist, she decided to give it a shot.

She couldn’t disclose what the application process was like, but she said like any other time she’s pursued a show, she submitted her portfolio and talked about her work.

“It’s a really unique kind of experience, and so I didn’t really analyze how likely I was or wasn’t to get chosen, and I wasn’t desperately pursuing it,” Kabot, 34, said on a phone interview. “By the time the whole process was over, it was a pretty big shock to find out I was cast on the show.”

The Cleveland Heights resident said her partner, Barry Underwood, gave her “endless pep talks” before she left for New York City, and her dad supported her decision to go.

“My father was quite ill when this whole casting process started, and he was really enthusiastic and encouraging me to take chances in life,” she said.

Many in her family have a creative side — her dad collected and restored antique boats, her mom worked in advertising and her grandmother was a tailor. They inspired her to become an aritst. She said she likes to work in all mediums, but her focus is sculpture and installation, and she is head of drawing at CIA.

Most recently, her work was featured at the Akron Museum of Art, the Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts in Grand Rapids, MI, the Erie Museum of Art in Erie, PA, and Tegnerforbundet in Oslo, Norway. 

When she found out Bravo picked her, she had to make arrangements to leave for potentially a long time. She was lucky — she didn’t have a show coming up soon and her students “rolled with the punches.”

In the first episode, which airs at 9 tonight, the 14 artists meet, analyze the self-portraits they submitted and compete in their first 12-hour challenge. Just like Project Runway, the contestants get an assignment and are timed, judged and the weakest is kicked off the show. Art auctioneer Simon de Pury mentors the artists, and host China Chow, New York gallery owner Bill Powers and senior art critic for New York Magazine Jerry Saltz judge the contestants. The winner receives a $100,000 cash prize and a solo show at the Brooklyn Museum.

Kabot’s self-portrait stood out — she created a banner of her face with several different expressions.

“We pose for a portrait, and that image is very static and only clearly captures a person in part of a moment in time, but there are hundred of moments before that and hundred of moments after that,” she said. “A friend of mine calls it a “Sarah-pede,” but that kind of continuous form was important to me. It’s a little bit ridiculous or self-deprecating to make myself in to a banner.”

But she wasn’t the star of the first episode. In the rules of reality, the unusual and dramatic personalities take center stage. One of her cast-mates called himself “Sucklord” and another liked to depict animal and human intestines in her work.

“It seemed to me a lot of (the artists) were trying to be warm and friendly and get some sense of who these other people were,” she said of the moment she met the rest of the cast. “You’re suddenly thrust into an unusual situation, but everyone is having the same unusual situation. You get over the awkwardness and pretty quick.”

She said the most challenging aspect of the show was the time constraints.

“It can take me many, many months to make a single piece. There’s time for a kind of minuscule experimentation on the show within 12 hours but nothing where you’re really fleshing out ideas,” she said. “If your commitment is something awful and you realize it six hours in, you have to scrap it and commit again. But I definitely wanted to grow from that experience.”

And that’s what she plans to convey to her students about her time on the show.

“As a professor, you spend a lot of time telling the students to take chances, and you know that art-making is a kind of risk-taking process by its very nature. It can be and it should be,” Kabot said. “It’s easy for artists to get very comfortable in their studios and with a certain way of practicing. The extraordinary challenge of making art in a public way and trying to fit my skills to any given assignment is a difficult challenge.”

The Cleveland Institute of Art is celebrating Kabot’s first appearance on the show at 9 tonight at Euclid Tavern, 11625 Euclid Ave. The watch party is open to the public. Kabot will not attend.

For more information about Kabot, visit her website, www.sarahkabot.com.