Rose Malenfant
This month’s installment of our Staff Spotlight series features our Project Designer, Rose Malenfant. As a Project Designer, Rose collaborates with youth and educators to create hands-on projects tied in with the content students are learning in their classroom. Currently, Rose is working with the Work, Learn and Grow program at Beam in planning, designing and implementing projects related to career exploration for youth.
Rose is a mixed-media textile artist who utilizes material transformation to expand our associations with common materials. Blending experimental and traditional techniques, her work is process oriented focusing on ritual and regeneration relating to the feminine body. Rose says she enjoys creating in different mediums as an artist because it helps her learn new things about herself. “I enjoy creating as a vehicle to open my mind and experiment because it teaches me different things about myself.” She has a Bachelor of Science in Visual Arts and Education — and is experienced in painting, woodworking, sculpting, and teaching art.
When asked what Rose enjoys most about working at Beam Center, Rose says, “I Enjoy the organization's open-mindedness and willingness to try new things, which I value a lot. I like that even if something hasn’t been done before; we work together collaboratively to try and figure it out. She continues on to say, “I enjoy working with the kids and seeing them view themselves with increasingly more value. So those moments of surprise and pride in self-discovery — and in return, they open our minds and inspire us.”
During Fall 2022 Apprenticeship, Rose was one of the Project Designers working with the youth, and she says the project she designed there is one of her favorite projects. Youth created mosaic stools they could take home and made communal benches that were later gifted to their school. This was her favorite project because the youth designed the benches and created data visualizations after speaking with their community members to inform the design of the stool. The benches' mosaic design came from the data they collected from their community members. Rose also adds, “The most beautiful moment was when we delivered the benches to their school, and the kids came out and told their friends, ‘Yeah, we made that,’ that was really cool to see.”
Outside of work, Rose is usually creating artwork in different mediums. Currently, she has an exhibition at Arts Letters and Numbers as a part of the Transformation project. Her piece, I Shed to Remember, is focused on the ritual of release . Speaking about her work, Rose says, “My work takes the lens of extracting ritual from compulsion and seizing agency to break destructive cycles. Regeneration is embedded in my process of sculpture-making. I use reclaimed materials, specifically nylon tights, that have strong charged associations with women’s bodies and societal expectations of perfectionism. By transforming these everyday materials, I transform the narrative surrounding our bodies into a space of creation, care, tenderness and clarity.” You can visit her website or follow her on her Instagram to learn more about Rose and her work.
We’re grateful for Rose and the knowledge she brings with her to Beam. Thank you Rose for being part of the Beam Community.
