ARTIST STATEMENT
My practice is one of listening. I listen to the material, I listen for whatever truths it wants to tell me today, and I listen for what the material wants to be. I do this by touch, by hearing the material whisper through my nerves and veins, “notice this” “I want to be bigger/ smaller/ smoother in this spot.” Images come to me in feelings that only my hands know how to describe. I feel these things deep inside of me as a building and often sudden urgency, like I inhaled and have been holding my breath with the instinct that I need to let it out. I am helping the material to evolve into what it wants to become, through my intuitive gestures guided by my listening, my attention.
Much of my work is along the theme of return by way of healing and vice versa. There is a visiting, where I am an observer, partially removed from the experience of living, just here to see what this life is about, and there is a returning, to truth and to who I am, where I come from, and why I am here. My intuitive carving and gestural mark making lead to truths. I trust the material to guide my hand to the mark it wants to have. The gesture is loving and generous.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Jacqueline is interested in flipping the power dynamic that exists between artist and material; rather than acting as master and manipulator, she prefers to collaborate with her medium and allow the voice and agency of the material to show through. Inspired by her mystical Jewish upbringing in Seattle, Washington, as well as her lifelong exposure to holistic and ayurvedic principles, she interprets an urgency in her body, similar to an inhaled and held breath, as a nonverbal communication that she is having with the material. She experiences the water that is in her material to be speaking directly to the water in her body, guiding her hand to the shape the material wants to become. Each unique piece that she creates emanates the eternal truth and genuineness of the loving gestures it is made of.
Currently based in Chicago, Jacqueline received a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago(SAIC) in Spring of 2022. Jacqueline has participated in many collaborative shows and exhibitions, displaying work in mediums not limited to: Ceramics, Paint, Lithograph, Monotype, Sculpture, Installation, and Performance. Most notably, her work “We Feed the Trees” was recently selected for and exhibited in the Feminist Biennial at Woman Made Gallery. Her practice was also spotlighted in a 2022 donor publication after being awarded the Ellen Lanyon Scholarship. She is also a religious school teacher and B’nai Mitzvah tutor at Temple Sholom of Chicago and a Jewish Art Salon Student Fellow for 2022.
© Jacqueline Saepoff