Jennifer Ryan
all considerations collide
artist bio.
Jennifer Ryan
1988
Jennifer Ryan's contemporary artwork features organic design made by creating groups of small lines, each dictated by the last. This process-based art is explored in various mediums including 2D ink drawings and 3D ceramic vessels, focusing on how it mimics the idea that all systems are created and intertwined by delicate but resilient parts.
Jennifer’s work has been featured locally in Buffalo, NY and nationally in exhibitions including AKG Public Art installation, UB Arts Collaboratory, Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center, Burchfield Penney Art Center, Carnegie Art Center, Flight Gallery, The Crucible Art Collective, The Cass Project, Underground’s Coffee House and Roastery, Starlight Studio & Art Gallery, The Allentown Association, and was the Whole Foods 1st place winner in the George Duboeuf Beaujolais Nouveau Wine Label Contest in 2018.
artist statement.
I like to describe my work as a vibrating blueprint; as swirling thoughts, and endless growth. I am inspired by the physical and psychological facets of body and nature. I examine these themes in various mediums; excited by each process, and how it mimics the idea that all systems are created and intertwined by delicate but resilient parts. These pieces start as random clusters of marks and grow into larger growths, taking on lives of their own. Eventually each “species” of line demands its place and directs the next sequence, and I move forward. These lines vibrate with energy, electrifying everything they come into contact with. I imagine these lines multiplying endlessly, filling the surface and every crevice, like the tongues of flames licking at the wood and leaving their marks. I become obsessed with each stroke of the pen from the initial dip into the ink to the subtle opening of the nib allowing the liquid to ooze out and mark the page. The movement is addicting; the swirl of the colors mixing as I complete the action; sometimes very slow as my face gets closer to the surface and closely observes the curve of each line. The word blueprint is sometimes used as a word for the subconscious mind and even though we believe in something because of the way we were raised and taught, we are ever changing and evolving. Everything is vibrating and energetic, we are just at different frequencies; cut from the same cloth, or earth, so to speak, yet we still seem to react so differently from one another whether it be on a larger political level or a much more intimate portrait of our individual bodies. These ideas have obvious relationships to the world we inhabit. We live within a network of creative minds with similar ideals and simultaneously next to others who do not share anything other than a carbon footprint. Part of this reality is what makes Our existence special; we are a complete picture made of the sum of its parts which are equally as beautiful individually and up close, as they are as a whole, from a distance.
