Artist

Artist

Bio

Jennifer Trask attended Massachusetts College of Art completing her BFA in Metalsmithing in 1993 and later graduated the State University of NY at New Paltz with an MFA in 1997. She remains in the Hudson valley area where she is a full time studio artist.

Examples of Trask’s work can be found in many public collections including the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC; the Museum of Arts and Design, New York, NY; Arkansas Art Center, Little Rock, AR; and the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, New Paltz, NY. In 2008 Trask was awarded the Peter S. Reed Foundation Grant.
Trask’s work has been cited in many books and periodicals including W, The New Yorker, Contemporary Crafts, the Lark Books series, Metalsmith Magazine, American Craft and The Sunday Boston Globe Arts section, among others.

Her 2008 series, entitled Unnatural Histories: Flourish, consists of objects that incorporate removable jewelry on encaustic framed panels. In a recent article, Adornment Magazine editor Elyse Korn write, “One cannot help but have a sense of wonder when viewing Jennifer Trask’s jewelry. It is exquisite in its subject matter, choice of materials, and execution. It is art imitating life and making it even more beautiful than the original – more fragile and heart-rending.”

Most recently Trask created a wall installation for an invitational exhibition at the Museum of Arts and Design in NY. ‘Intrinsecus’ employs found materials like bone, wood, and antlers referring to the Dutch tradition of Vanitas and at the same time addressing the traditional practice of isolating examples/ideals of beauty stylization of nature, "in effect a death of the real, the imperfect, the individual."

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Artist Statement(s)

Embodiment

What do we carry with us in our bones? Literally, and metaphorically?
Used to express definitive physical sensation and emotional sentiment (e.g. ‘bone weary’), bone is considered the absolute reductive essence of our physical selves. Bones linger, incorporating evidence of what we ate, how we worked, injuries, illnesses, and environmental conditions during a given lifetime. Lead, copper and iron, among other metals, bind to our bones as obscure mementos of our experiences.

What if those amalgams were to flourish and grow?
What would we see if we could view concepts and ideals, not just the verifiable physicality?

My process is a strange dance between the factual, or scientifically based research and the associative, or intuitive and non-verbal. As I move between the two places, factual and intuitive, internal and external, the results are cross-species hybrids that embody a peculiar romanticized vision of the natural world that betray a very human concept of separateness, of dominion over nature.
Looking deeper still, we see a measure of the unanticipated, in traces of internalized abstract experiences and ideals.

Implicit and explicit.
Internal and external.

vestige
–noun
1.
a mark, trace, or visible evidence of something that is no longer present or in existence:
A few columns were the last vestiges of a Greek temple.

2.
a surviving evidence or remainder of some condition, practice, etc.: These superstitions are vestiges
of an ancient religion.

3.
a very slight trace or amount of something: Not a vestige remains of the former elegance of the house.

4.
Biology. a degenerate or imperfectly developed organ or structure that has little or no utility, but
that in an earlier stage of the individual or in preceding evolutionary forms of the organism performed
a useful function.

5.
Archaic. a footprint; track.

From: Random House Dictionary, 2009

Unnatural Histories: Flourish

My recent body of work from 2007, Unnatural Histories, delved into our precarious, at times, contentious, relationship with nature. We admire it, we attempt to collect, contain, and regulate it. Yet somehow we see ourselves as separate from it, beyond its reach and influence. In these objects the rift is visible in vines refusing containment, growth that confounds expectations. Branches sprout blossoms that return your gaze. Ornamental frameworks evolve into tendrils. Deliberate arrangements of flora and fauna, mineral and vegetal, ornamental and intrinsic, coalesce as hybrids that refer to the remarkable ability of nature to adapt and evolve in any circumstance. Down to the bone: Used literally to express definitive physical sensation and emotional sentiment, (e.g.: “feel it in my bones” or “bone weary”) bone is considered the absolute reductive essence of our physical selves. Bones linger, sometimes discovered centuries later. While bones seem permanent, they evolve like any cell with an assigned function, bone will break down and re-form, and incorporate evidence of what we ate, how we worked, injuries, traumas, illnesses, and environmental conditions during our lifetime. Lead, copper and iron, among other metals, bind to our bones as obscure mementos of our experiences. What if these amalgams were to flourish and blur physical boundaries? My imagery is derived from my examination of the structures of plant and animal life, from the plainly visible down to microscopic patterns of growth in nature. What I found was a system of rigid elemental principles with a remarkably vast potential for invention and adaptation, that also lends itself to powerful visual metaphors. Each of the pieces fit into one of three powers of magnitude; hand sized (10-1), cellular(10-5 to 10-8), or atomic scale(10-10). The results are oddly metaphoric, unnatural histories, that embody both a peculiar passion for, and contentious relationship with, nature itself. My hope is that in a moment of visceral delight, or simply curiosity perhaps one might reclaim a sense of wonder, as to the purpose of such meticulous arrangements.

Flourish, from 2008, is a continuation of this theme. In this second chapter, the hybrids are not just cross-species, but cross discipline as well. Flora and fauna thrive and outgrow containment metaphorically and literally. The jewelry object is an outgrowth of the painting and reaches past the two dimensional plane. The ornament extends beyond the wearable object and into the picture plane, stones are set directly into the paintings and frames themselves.

These are portraits of unintended cultivars. While neither clearly baneful nor benign, the results are oddly metaphoric. Branches bear fruit of bone and iron. Bones house seeds and grow leaves. The paintings and frames embody a peculiar romanticized vision of nature at the same time betray a very human passion to possess nature itself. My hope is that in a moment of visceral delight, or simply curiosity perhaps one might reclaim a sense of wonder, as to the purpose of such meticulous arrangements.

*** The bone and pre-ban ivory is found in my rural environment, or purchased in flea markets, then altered by carving or inlay. The gold or palladium frameworks are made from recycled material only.