2009 MFA Artist: Jessica Brandl
Jessica Brandl's Artist Statement
I stand waist-high in a sea of wind rushed crops. As they sway all around me like waves on the ocean, I steady myself attempting to hold onto these last moments of my experience of home. By touch, taste, smell, sight, and sense I know my longing for home. In its absence I’ve discovered that memories of the real place have become more polished than the original experience. Home is transformed into a place in my mind where the boundaries of time overlap creating a collaged experience.
Inside dark windowless houses I am surrounded by a glut of cast-off and forgotten objects. My optimism to have things only proves hallow here. As I walk among the caricatures of familiar objects, it is the soft things I often notice: an armchair, blankets, clothing, curtains. I imagine the life and home that should surround them. But there is nothing, only vacant artifacts that have no specific memory or meaning.
About the Artist
Jessica views her paintings and installations as an explorative space for understanding an optimistic but often impoverished rural Midwest. By gathering a broad amount of visual information about rural America, she creates visual art works that relate its substance from a personal, interpretive perspective, rather than through an objective documentary structure. For her it is the search for visual components and how she psychologically and emotionally responds to them; through the use of her photography and journaling she is able to cross-reference her memories with collected anonymous rural approximations.
Brandl was born Texan and transplanted into Nebraska where she attended Concordia University for Drawing and Painting. She then attended The Kansas City Art Institute to study ceramics and art history earning her BFA. She is currently working on her master thesis at The Ohio State University.
