Revealed Artist Jennifer Kirkpatrick: Transient Connections

Artist Statement

Ornament is designs, motifs, and patterns worked into objects for the pleasure of outline, color, or fantasy. Whether it is carved terra cotta embellishments, wrought iron tracery, wallpaper, light fixtures, furniture, cabinet handles, window placement, or any of the plethora of items that suffuse architectural spaces, this collection of parts assembles a collage  of decorative layers fixed in my memory. Like anything we see every day, these decorative elements become so familiar as to work subliminally, like a visual background music noticed only when it disappears. By cutting designs from their familiar contexts, I am re-envisioning the complex display that I see in cityscapes and mediating to bring forward components reliant on  other forms and making them into independent forms. 

My installations generate visual distortions of tangible space and contort spaces that only coalesce in the mind’s eye. Existing in an expanded world where the rules of reality don’t apply and form exists through illusion, wood folds like fabric and lace mimics steel. My work gives way to a bodily experience where the viewer is drawn in, but remains tentative about their own footing, like being momentarily overwhelmed when walking out of a bus station in an unfamiliar city and not quite knowing how to navigate.  

Evolution is a constant part of a cityscape. Cities have become a conglomeration of varying styles, all interacting as part of the contemporary urban fabric throughout the world. The designs I utilize originate in the broad array of decorative motifs adorning ancient through contemporary architecture. The individual components of my work are assembled to construct an imaginary cityscape drawn from many places and times. Installations are temporary, only existing once in a particular place, to be disassembled and rebuilt anew each time.

Jennifer Kirkpatrick 

Jennifer Kirkpatrick is an interdisciplinary artist originally from Nebraska, Her work has been exhibited both regionally and nationally including at Trestle Gallery (Brooklyn, NY), Union Projects (Pittsburgh, PA), The Museum of Fine Arts (Houston, TX), Pewabic Pottery (Detroit, MI), and Crane Arts Gallery (Philadelphia, PA). In 2015, she participated in a residency at Vermont Studio Center. Jennifer received her MFA from Penn State University (2015) and both her BFA and Art Education undergraduate degrees from Northwest Missouri State (2010). She currently lives in Youngstown, OH where she is the Studio Art Support Specialist and Part-Time Faculty at Youngstown State University.