OM.2026.085 - Kelly Feltault - USA

OM.2026.085 - collage on panel - 8 x 8 inches - Taxonomy of a Bright Thing - Kelly Feltault - USA - Visual Poetry and Color

Kelly Feltault is a multidisciplinary artist working in collage, mixed media, experimental printmaking, and textile-based processes. Her practice explores different ways of knowing and knowledge-power systems within science, medicine, and gender, and how people construct knowledge about themselves and the natural world. She returns to topics around how bodies learn, adapt, and make meaning under conditions of uncertainty, and how art can both solidify and unmake scientific knowledge-power systems.

Feltault received her BFA in painting and printmaking from VCU and a BA in Contemporary Art History, but her artistic practice matured largely through decades of work in community arts, museum education, and arts-in health contexts. She has taught middle and high school art internationally and served as Art Studio Director at the Richmond Children’s Museum. After completing her PhD in Anthropology, she spent more than twenty-five years assessing the impact of social programs on communities. Since 2020, she has focused on assessing the impacts of community-based arts programs on wellbeing and health. This work profoundly reshaped her studio practice, drawing her back to printmaking, collage, and textile methods that privilege process and embodied learning. Her background in arts and health research led her to complete a certification as a therapeutic community arts facilitator (TAPC).

As the founder of Crooked Path Studios, Feltault leads therapeutic arts programs that support women navigating chronic illness in finding their own path to wellbeing. Living with her own chronic illnesses has further informed Feltault’s approach as lived, somatic experience. Crooked Path Studios functions as an extension of her artistic inquiry into dignity, access, and non-linear ways of knowing to support chronically ill women understanding themselves and their bodies outside narratives of fixing, productivity, and the wellness industry. Through Crooked Path Studios, she translates research on arts in health, lived experience, and process-based art into accessible forms of learning, collective reflection, and community building.

In her art, Feltault draws on her background in art and applied anthropology to investigate the relationship between scientific observation, personal experience, and embodied ways of knowing. Her ongoing Ways of Knowing series examines systems of classification, natural history collections, field guides, and scientific illustration alongside the uncertainties and complexities of lived experience.

Working in the space between naming and knowing, Feltault creates layered compositions that bring scientific and experiential knowledge into conversation. Combining paper, textiles, and found objects, her work explores the tensions between order and ambiguity, description and wonder, inviting viewers to consider what may be learned through observation, curiosity, and making.

Digital Presence & Community

Feltault documents her studio practice, exhibitions, and the ongoing Ways of Knowing series through her website where she also takes commissions. Visit Crooked Path Studios.

Therapeutic Practices: She provides therapeutic practices virtually and in-person. Her YouTube channel delivers therapeutic arts practices for women with chronic illness while her 1:1 virtual sessions provide tailored support. In-person sessions are delivered through arts in health, social prescribing, and creative aging programs. Inquire about in-person therapeutic sessions on the website.

Community: Through Substack, Feltault combines personal essays, therapeutic arts, and visual storytelling to foster a community for women living with chronic illness. Her Wayfinding community explores creativity as a way of navigating uncertainty, cultivating resilience, and making meaning to navigate chronic illness. Learn more about her Substack community.