Mikki Itzigsohn ʼ12 (Los Angeles, BA), is a self-taught musician, artist, and painter who creates stories filled with the magic of creativity and the sacred. Itzigsohn’s musical spirit and visual art have most closely merged in her Songwriters series. This series of paintings, which she began creating during the COVID-19 lockdown, depicts women playing a variety of musical instruments and engaging in the creative process, set against stark and melodic blue, pink, and yellow contrasts that make the paintings almost read like songs unto themselves. She says the series is meant to inspire others to turn to creativity as a way of making sense, as a way of making meaning out of experiences and challenges in life.
Itzigsohn traces the paintings in the series to a variety of musicians, artists, and songwriters that have inspired her. One key figure, the pianist Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou, was herself not just a player of music but also a deeply spiritual person who spent her life as a nun and monastic in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. The theme of the spiritual and sacred flows throughout the series and artistic process. “I grew up Jewish in Los Angeles,” says Itzigsohn, “where nuns were this untouchable, mystical, mythical presence. I just loved the style and the dress.” These influences can be seen throughout the series. She also incorporates owls and tigers as symbols of wisdom and strength that, in some pieces, watch over the women, while in others, curl up at their feet like pets.
A Los Angeles native, across Songwriters Itzigsohn paints landscapes reflecting the Southwest. Growing up, she experienced her home city as a magical place of discovery, which impacted her as a musician and as a visual artist. One of her most enduring influences came from her years working at McCabe’s, LA’s famed guitar shop, which she describes as a “cultural hub.” There, she encountered extraordinary songwriters such as Odetta (“The Voice of the Civil Rights Movement”), influential guitarist JJ Cale, and legendary singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell. Itzigsohn went on to work producing shows at McCabe’s, which she says “became a master class not only on how to view the ‘spiritual experience’ of live shows, but the opportunity to work with tremendous artists.”
She also took influence from her undergraduate studies at Antioch University Los Angeles. Itzigsohn says that many of the undergraduate creative learning exercises she practiced in her Antioch classes impacted her artistic process and “helped open something up in me to get to where I am now.” She describes one class as “a springboard for creativity” and remembers how it helped her “connect to the world inside of me and bring it out.”
As suggested by these paintings, Itzigsohn has a deep love and connection with music. She began her own music career working in different facets of the music industry and playing in a number of bands. Eventually she started her own band, Small Wigs, with her husband and collaborator Elvis Kuehn. Itzigsohn and Kuehn currently live in Austin, Texas. For her, Austin is a space, like those in her paintings, that is full of creative community, where art and music are treated as “sacred.”
