Couple look to share joy through creating and teaching art

A passion and curiosity for art initially led two St. Cloud State University alumni to their alma mater as well as each other.

Gatis Cirulis, originally from Latvia, came to the U.S. after serving in the military. He originally started going to school in Michigan before discovering an interest in art. He started working in St. Cloud before enrolling at SCSU to finish his Bachelor of Fine Arts. Katya Reka, originally from Ukraine, said her journey to St. Cloud State was a “long, winding path” that ultimately brought her to the right place. Reka and Cirulis met when faculty introduced them in order to work on a web design project. The rest is history.

“It was amazing,” she said. “It was a good decision to come to St. Cloud.”

Reka earned her BFA in studio art in 2007 while Cirulis earned his BFA in art in 2006. The couple now reside in New Mexico with their daughter. They’ve both made careers of teaching a variety of artistic mediums as well as compiling a long list of freelance clients. They started Nomadic Circus Studio, which produces book and fiber art, graphic design, letterpress and pieces through other artistic mediums.

“I started working at an ad agency center, and I remember designing things that were meant to be thrown out and kind of rethinking my life choices. But then I thought about design as a designer — people using design for other things than just selling and advertising, and that kept me interested in the field of design,” Reka said. “Then I discovered teaching and that was a big passion. Teaching at a university level, working with young adults, helping them make the choices that I was once helped with.”

“I look for something that gives joy,” Cirulis added. “It'll be simple as that quality experience, quality in presenting, quality in creating things, and having joy myself in working as well as giving joy to others.”

While both have taken some time off from teaching in higher education at different stages in their careers, Reka — who has previously been a remote faculty member for SCSU — has started teaching children through her local schools. She has discovered interesting similarities as well as differences between teaching the different age groups.

“Getting to work with younger kids, that's completely different. I think the impact is even greater because they're not worried about a job. They're not worried about money; they're not worried about making it, so it’s about getting them to make good decisions. I teach technology, so we talk about visual language. We talk about safety online, but we also talk about AI and ownership and what's going to happen to their experience with the internet,” Reka said. “Graphic design as a profession, for example, will not be the same completely. I see fifth-graders doing the level of work that my 25-year-olds would do in graduate school, so that's been interesting. I think impact comes where you know you still have to teach them to ask the right questions — the ‘Why?’ And that doesn't change — even if technology changes, the why is still stay human, stay humane. It’s getting back to the roots of it and trying to keep them on the right path. Be kind, be human. So that's what keeps me going.”

Both Cirulis and Reka have multiple projects lined up at any given time, but are looking to collaborate more in the future, especially as their letterpress work has been gaining momentum.

“More and more we've been talking about getting into the studio more together instead of giving each other time to work separately — getting in the studio more together and making a book together,” Reka said. “Maybe a children's book or something like that,

and setting a production schedule for ourselves, a book a year or a book every few months.”

“Get back to that studio experience, where we met,” Cirulis added.

“Talk, grow, experiment. I feel like part of adulting is losing some of that freedom you have as a student,” Reka said. “You should never stop learning, so that’s what we plan to do.”