Extrusions – New Work by Jen Pack
“Sewing, using silk and thread as materials, is
my primary mode of expression....it also references painting
and drawing’ – so states the artist Jen Pack
in her artist’s statement of 2005. In her desire
to transform space through the use of intense color and
the creation of a physical presence beyond a flat 2-dimensional
surface, she has accepted the primary coordinates of art-making
based on concepts established in the early 19th century,
when so much of modern color theory was articulated.
“Such theories suggested that weaving was the origin
of architecture – and thus all art – weaving’s
wefts and warps were the fundamental structures of the
wall surfaces; it’s knots, the braces, joints, and
buttresses of 3-dimensional structures; and unfixed threads
continuances of form and color beyond the basic structure,
cascading in unison or springing externally to start other
structures in other spaces.
“Jen Pack’s works are fabulous conceits of
woven surfaces which glow in translucent and ambient light;
some have selected passages that fall to the ground in
sensuous langour; others have threads “extruded”
beyond the artwork’s token shape and spilling across
the walls. In every case, the work is exuberant, colorful,
and challenging. In each case the work does not automatically
revert to a feminist aesthetic (weaving = craft = home
arts); rather, each is fully a work of art unto itself
with its feminine echoes, to be sure, but with its testaments
to a masculine heritage at the same time.”
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