ARTIST STATEMENT
The act of casting bronze does not start or end with the pouring of molten metal. First, one must prepare a wax pattern and make a mold which is destined to break after serving its purpose of receiving metal only once. The wax must be melted out of the mold which is simultaneously vitrified. After one labors and sweats over the pouring of 2000 ℉ molten bronze, precise effort is put into the process of finishing the surface.
Between women, devoting oneself to another though best friendship is one of the most radical forms of intimacy. This diaristic installation explores the gut wrenching loss that is platonic heartbreak and the bitter feeling of care rejected or taken for granted. The violent act branding of an old friend’s stranded and unclaimed jacket with a carefully crafted valentine is a retroactive gesture; proclaiming the significance of a relationship and compassion taken advantage of.
My Heart I-III and Your Sleeve document the impressions we leave on each other, intentionally or otherwise. Overall, my work reflects my own views toward a personal multiplicity of women hoods: embracing, rejecting, and satirizing preconceived notions of femininity. This comes together in an autobiographical body of works through a lens which is fixated on humor. The crux of the work is radical vulnerability bred through compulsive honesty. Using a combination of mold-making and casting, metalworking, woodworking, writing, and various fibers techniques, I create sculptural self portraiture in the form of anthropomorphized objects and narrative structures.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Olivia Jobbe is a visual artist living and working in Chicago, Illinois. Sculpturally and performatively, Jobbe creates an autobiographical body of works through a lens which is fixated on humor, a personal multiplicity of femininities, and radical vulnerability bred through compulsive truth telling. Jobbe is currently a BFA undergraduate at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and is an awardee of the college’s Presidential Merit Scholarship. She has exhibited at the Riverside Art Center, Hawthorne Contemporary, Lubeznik Center for the Arts, and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is the recipient of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago’s New Outstanding Artist Award, the Robert A. & Dorothy W. Rocke Scholarship, and a South Shore Arts Regional Arts Council Youth Arts Award. Jobbe is the co-founder of the artist-run roving gallery, Probe, established in May 2023.
© Olivia Jobbe