She was well-armed for the workplace, she thought, with an MFA from the Art Institute of Chicago and practical experience with the Oakland Museum and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, where she learned writing about art on the job.
“I thought I could write about anything,” she said.
  
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“It was a very direct way of tracking my job search,” said Kossy, now 57, an 11-year Moss Beach resident. “After a while, they became a collection, and once they become a collection, they become interesting in a different way.”
Those letters rebounded to become part of an ongoing San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art exhibit called “It’s Not Us, It’s You,” which taps into the dilemma of many caught up in the economic downturn — and transmits a message of hope and persistence.
“It’s opportunity. You think rejections are setbacks, but they’re just setbacks, not disasters,” she said. “You just go on to find the job. Those are just hurdles on the long path.”
“It’s Not Us, It’s You” is a timely exploration of the inevitability of rejection, examined through objects that invite self-reflection, humor and stark honesty. In addition to conventional sculptures, paintings, video and multi-media, it includes once-discarded objects that found new life, like bottles of wine made from grapes that were vineyard rejects, pillows on which brush-off phrases like “it wasn’t meant to be” are etched in needlepoint, or a wall of rejection letters sent to an artist seeking a gallery.
The exhibit opened April 4 and will run through June 20 at the institute, located at 560 South First St. in San Jose. It can be reached at (408) 283-8155.
It also includes a dais on which sits a large notebook, filled with plastic sleeves containing Kossy’s rejections letters from her old job search.
Back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Kossy was making the rounds of businesses seeking work in technical writing — and realizing that her art background only went so far. “I’ve never in my life felt that my skill set was in demand,” she said. “Certain skills aren’t rewarded in our society.”
Living on the economic margin was not new to Kossy. Looking at today’s economic downturn, she counts herself lucky because her husband’s job was secure and they have no children. But it’s still living on the edge, even though she was able to leverage her talent into exhibiting her photographic collages in Bay Area and national venues.
“I got discouraged” when contemplating the invested time, energy and expenses involved with marketing and selling her art.
She relates to those who are now where she was. “I can feel scared for people who lose their life savings,” she said. “You hope to retire for a couple decades’ peace and quiet, enjoy your family, and it’s a shock to people to find out the country isn’t taking care of you the way you thought it would.”
But she decided that, in an odd way, the realization can be liberating. Then she found those old rejection letters. “Pulling them out of the drawer, this reminds me of struggles I went through (that) turned out real good,” she said.
What to do with them? “I just put the letters on Facebook. That was a project,” she said. “It was like they had more meaning, not just sitting in a drawer.”
An artist friend told her about the planned San Jose exhibit. She called the institute, which asked for all 150 letters.
Now, printed out, her book sits on a dais in the exhibit. And Kossy waxes philosophical as she looks the collection over, noting the names of corporations no longer in existence.
“Businesses come and go,” she said. “I’m still here.”
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