Thru - Line

Jessica Gendron

Degree: MFA

Area: Printmaking

Thesis Statement

My work marks moments of trauma and its connection through place along with the experience of the viewer. Minimal compositions consisting of line and deep values mark the space and time of episodic memories. A systematic, documentary approach is used to label events that have been extracted from places. This record relays the essential role of intimate places: trauma clings to location and emphasizes its importance. Through balance combined with structure, shapes and lines are drawn from consolidated memory and the displacement of trauma throughout spaces. Printmaking, a reproducible medium, is used to alter images of place that references and reclaims a moment.

Sites are represented through the construction of two-dimensional architectural structures that serve as a metaphor for trauma. Experiences within a space adhere to that location, and the most memorable of those act like a stain, never to be removed. These places are transitional objects with a penetrable quality that allows the viewer to enter with their own interpretations and expectations. Abstract depictions of such places allow for an objective relationship to the viewer, but it still retains interconnectedness of people. The purpose of these tarnished spaces is to reexamine influential places such as houses, apartments, and schools. The monumentalizing of these buildings is a way of working through, as well as, reclaiming the trauma that has occurred in them. Through place, I aim to represent my own experiences as well as suggesting one to the viewer.