STATEMENT

There is something significant about a move to a foreign country, especially when you are old enough to adopt it as home yet naïve enough for it to shape your character.

As a young adult, I moved to New Zealand; a land of contrasts that offered me a pluralistic view of the world and continues to fascinate me.

Imprints of New Zealand’s ecosystem grew in my mind as I gathered the knowledge I now use to create analogous, biologically resonant structures in clay. I strive to capture a moment in the transition of life, of travel, through the exploration of abstraction. The objects that represent seeds, plants, and fossils are drawn from an antipodean natural world and presented with a touch of ambiguity.

One work informs another in my process, causing a sequence to occur. A piece grows out of the previous while laying groundwork for the next. A sense of wholeness develops and informs the preoccupations in my work: cycles, generations, replication, homology and patterns. The work evolves naturally, organically, a genesis of form. Art allows us to create our own laws.

Artifacts are made
Organisms grow.

In essence, I am creating various versions of the same thing. Not to compete with, but to seek the beauty found in the engineering of nature.
 

BIO  

Having  spent  many  years  as  a  self-taught metalsmith, Jennifer  started  working  in  clay  during  a  decade long  spell  of  living  in  New  Zealand.  Looking  to  hone her wheel  and  wood firing  skills,  she  moved  to Australia  and  apprenticed  to  Robert  Barron,  in Kardella,  VIC.  

Following  on  from  chasing  wombats,  travels  took Jennifer  back  to  the  USA  where  she  was  introduced to  the  American  craft  scene  by  way  of  The  Center for  Craft,  Creativity  &  Design;  here  she  was  able  to mentor  the  next  generation  of  makers.

When  spreadsheets  became  too  much,  ceramic sculptor  Peter  Callas  was  in  need  of  an  assistant.   Taking  finely  tuned  skills  from  Rob  and  throwing them  out  the  window  at  Peter’s,  it  was  time  for graduate  school.    Today,  when  not  traveling whenever  and  wherever  possible,  Jennifer  spends her  time  at  University  of  Massachusetts|Dartmouth  as a  Distinguished  Art  Fellow.  

She  has  been  invited  to firings  and  exhibitions throughout  the  USA,  Australia, Denmark  and  New Zealand.