JEM
Email:
Biography:
MFA 2019
I have spent the last three years earning my BFA at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. I have learned many things along the way, and my practice has moved through the influence of DIY punk culture, evolving through cut, paste, and xerox multiples to expanded vocabulary in video, sound, and performance. But, a crucial element at the core of my art is the social or relational. A lot of my work is graphic based/print work, with mass produced art forms such as print, music, and video being an important influence. These forms offer a way of communication that were intended to get into as many hands as possible, and although, I do not wish to produce art for mass consumption, I am influenced by these mediums capacity to reach people, particular those individuals who could benefit from the discourses that contemporary art produces.
Inspired by Rene Magritte's ‘This is Not a Pipe’, I appropriated his phrase, replacing the ‘Pipe’ with ‘City.’ I wanted to bring into question not the mimesis nature of the statement, but instead I wanted encourage people to think about what makes a city a city. What makes it important? what makes it relevant? I made hundreds of prints, and instead of trying to collate them into an exhibition, I dispersed the prints within my communities. This impulse stemmed from a desire to build community, too strengthen and enrich the relationships I had to these individual people. I wanted to share my art.