Jen Dwyer
The Arbitrary Assignment of Value
© Jen Dwyer
Debrah's Livingroom
Jen Dwyer
“It’s spread between contemporary advertising and media… that all parts of a woman’s body is a project to work on.”
– Jen Dwyer
There is an electricity to Jen Dwyer’s art. Playful, yes—thoughtful, even more—her painting and sculptures deliver a fresh perspective deeply rooted in scholarly understanding. No doubt you will find them just as delicious as I do.
© Jen Dwyer
Miss You
Jen Dwyer
Jen Dwyer: I grew up in the Bay Area, California. Funk art was a big part of the cultural landscape growing up. Artists like Viola Frey, Richard Shaw, and Robert Arneson were making these works that were really accessible based on the material of the ceramic medium. Their work had a lot of humor involved, but it was also relating to their own personal experiences and what was going on politically at the time. That shaped my initial influences, and it still really resonates with me today—wanting to create work that is both inspired by lived experiences and what is happening globally, as well as what I’m researching at the time. My mom is super creative and has always had a deep love of art. My sibling’s an artist too, and I think that is how we got into art. She always made sure that we had after-school art classes. In high school, I was really in love with ceramics and my mom also set me up with a little ceramics studio. She was really supportive.
Elizabeth Mathis Cheatham: So you started making ceramics in high school?
JD: As long as I remember, I’ve been creative. Even as a kid, that’s all I ever wanted to do. But I had a really amazing high school ceramics teacher, and that was the first time I really fell in love with art. I just knew, whether I was someday paid for it or not, I was always going to do it.
EMC: What was it that drew you to the ceramics versus other forms of art?
JD: I’m dyslexic and I also have another learning disability, so school was always really challenging. It wasn’t diagnosed until I was 18. So growing up, I always thought I was less intelligent than my peers; ceramics was the first time I was able to learn in a way that wasn’t solely linguistic and came very naturally to me. I’m also really sensitive, and ceramics in particular was a very meditative and healing material at a time I was struggling. It helped build my confidence at a young age, when other subjects were more challenging.
EMC: Yes, I can see how that could be such a wonderful tool for healing. Did your parents continue to be supportive of art as you got older or did it shift at some point?
JD: Very strong to the latter, unfortunately. My 20s was hard, I would say, with my parents. We didn’t grow up with any artists. I think they were just really scared of how an artist’s career works. But it really forced me to be very determined, not having parental support and familial monetary support, like, ‘Let me figure this out.' It caused me to be really innovative in trying to piece together how being an artist works.
EMC: Absolutely. It’s interesting how there’s certain things within parental comfort zones with art—they’re like ‘Ok, if you keep it a hobby.’ But the second that it crosses over into life’s work, all of a sudden, ‘Too much! Too much!’
JD: Now that I’m in my early 30s, my parents are like, “Well if we want a relationship with you, we have to accept you.” And now at this point, both of my parents are really supportive of my chosen career path.
EMC: ‘We’ve given up trying to change you, so maybe we’ll change now.’ Earlier, when you were talking about the artists you initially connected with, one of the threads between them was the fact that they were making “accessible” art. What does that mean to you and how does that impact the art that you make?
© Jen Dwyer
Tamara
Jen Dwyer
JD: Ceramics is one of those materials that whether it’s PlayDough or mud or commercial ceramics, everyone has had some experience with it. Everyone has either touch clay, PlayDough, etc. Throwing could take a while to get the hang of, but everyone can make a coil pot. The tactility of the material and the universality of it—it’s a very relatable material. Then I think, too, there is a lot of representation in this work. Anyone that is sculpting the figure, I think there’s an immediate connection you can make with that. I guess that’s how I see that medium. It’s an easy initial access point conceptually, and also materiality, with everyone having a point of reference to the material.
EMC: As you have been creating recently, what has really been on your mind?
JD: Although there’s certainly ties of gender in my work, what I’ve been thinking a lot about is the way that tastemakers assign value to either objects and then also bodies, too. It’s spread between contemporary advertising and media and the way that it’s portrayed that all parts of a woman’s body is a project to work on. I feel like in advertising, it’s like, “How can you improve? How can you change this?” Versus other bodies are marketed to, “Enjoy life! Excess!”
EMC: When you reference the past, are you contemplating the difference between the tastemaker then and what we are experiencing now?
JD: I think the thread is the arbitrariness of it. For example—and I don’t know if that’s the best word, but that’s essentially what I’m thinking about— Rococo art. Today when we look at it, I feel that a lot of people consider it a very gaudy or kitsch art form. It’s kind of hard for our modern palette to look at these porcelain figurines with lots of pastels and gold—the opulence can be pretty over the top. But at that time, in the 18th century, they were a status symbol. You would have displayed these porcelain art objects on your dinner table as a sign of status, similar to how one would assign the value of a Louis Vuitton purse or something. It was such a high commodity, and porcelain in that time period was considered white gold. It was a coveted material, versus today, a bag of porcelain for $20; the value of it changed a lot. Thinking about that arbitrariness of the value assigned to something back then versus today, and kind of how there’s a hyper fetishizing today, like the female body, are interesting to question.
EMC: Yes.
JD: The way that porcelain and the female body can be—yeah, those ties.
© Jen Dwyer
Chloe
Jen Dwyer
© Jen Dwyer
Angela
Jen Dwyer
“Something I think a lot about in my work is how to make it about creating a narrative that’s about the women’s interests/narrative, rather than about this image of a woman being for the audience’s viewing pleasure.”
– Jen Dwyer
EMC: And, what first drew you to that period of art and porcelain?
JD: My first year of grad school was in 2016, I was making work that was really reactive to what was happening at the time. The first installation I made was of vagina tiles that said, “Don’t grab mine.” I was making work that was really reactive to political hot topics. My second year in school my professors mentioned, ‘This is really interesting work, but how do you see yourself in the canon of art history?’ That led me to researching the history of porcelain. There were two points in history of ceramic that I was really interested in and still work with today— the 18th century when porcelain was this extreme fetish. I also think it’s really interesting that a lot of the objects were essentially functional, so I think that’s another fascinating part of ceramics to me is that it feels harder to define—is it art or design or craft? That’s a challenge to define it in today’s art world. I feel like it makes it more confusing, and that’s exciting because it’s harder to control. The second were Paleolithic figurines. The Venus of Willendorf is probably the most well-known. There’s hundreds of them, and they were thought to be sculpted by the artist. That’s why their bodies are so not realistic and so stylized because that’s how women see themselves looking down.
EMC: Interesting.
JD: You see your body, and it’s wider at the top and skinnier at the bottom.
EMC: Oh wow.
JD: That’s why these figures were these weird kind of angles. So that’s a motif I’ve been using in my work for years, as a motif for the original female gaze or the original female portrait. In general, I’m interested in really creating subjectivity for more objectified bodies in the canon of art history and contemporary advertising. Something I think a lot about in my work is how to make it about creating a narrative that’s about the women’s interests/narrative, rather than about this image of a woman being for the audience’s viewing pleasure.
EMC: Yes, absolutely. Perhaps less of how the world sees her and more of just how she sees herself. I loved that idea that it wasn't even a mirror they were using. It was literally their viewpoint versus having something else reflecting back who they ‘are’. When we spoke for the first time, you mentioned the huge impact that residencies have had on your practice. How so?
JD: I was talking to an artist friend the other day who's doing one now, and she was just emphasizing that they are such a good community-building experience, so great with meeting other artists and curators and just feeling a sense of connection, that I feel like is so crucial when you're alone all day every day in the studio. But I also think especially for ceramicists, you need facilities; you need a kiln. Residencies really enabled me to get my practice off the ground. I lived in Brooklyn for four years before grad school. I was bartending at night, teaching kids art during the day and trying to cobble together a studio practice. I feel like for a painter, in the very beginning of your career, you kind of paint in your bedroom, but for a ceramicist and other sculptures, you do need facilities. The residencies have been a really incredible thing to grow my career and practice.
© Jen Dwyer
Sheila
Jen Dwyer
EMC: In this last year, you have begun to share more of your paintings. Can I ask you why you haven’t been vocal about them before now?
JD: The curator, Will Hutnick of Maxon Mills Gallery in New York, was really excited about my paintings, and I feel like hearing him say, "They're really strong!" That little bit of encouragement can go so far. I really feel like Will was the reason that I showed them. And they were really well received. The first piece that I sold was a painting, so I felt like that was a sign from the universe to keep going. The reason I haven't shown them—I started painting three or four years ago, but I've been doing ceramics for 15+ years. I haven't been showing them—I think it's just a little bit of imposter's syndrome. I have so many degrees in ceramics, and I've been doing it for so long vs painting is just something that I started doing a few years ago because I loved it. So I think that's why I haven't been as confident with painting. But I feel like that's changing, and it's something I really love. I'm having my first solo show in Manhattan at Dinner Gallery in 2022, and so I've been chatting with the curator, Celine Mo, about showing larger paintings and sculptures together. I curated my first exhibition there and that went well and it was a really positive experience working with that gallery team. They just asked if I'd do a solo show next year, and it feels really exciting to have this long length of time to experiment with new things and be able to make new work and then kind of edit and choose. Whereas I feel like in the past, curators would reach out to me and say, "Do you want to be in this show in a month?" And it's kind of this fast turnaround time. So it feels exciting to have this planned amount of time.
© Jen Dwyer
Cindy’s Livingroom
Jen Dwyer
EMC: That's great. Is there a noticeably different mental and emotional space that you're in when you're creating ceramics versus painting?
JD: There are some similarities as far as getting lost in time. With sculpture—clay dries out so you can only work on it for so long. In the construction part there’s this time period—I try and finish them within a couple weeks and you can kind of push that to a month, but anything longer than a month is really hard to do if you're not building in sections, if you're just building one piece all together. Whereas painting you can leave forever! I have a painting I started almost a year ago that I have to get back to. I think that that's a really amazing part of painting and also something that if you're someone like me that works on a lot of things at once can be a little tricky too.
I'm also really in love with throwing again. It's something I've loved my whole life. It’s kind of like the first thing I did as an art form in high school that I just couldn't get enough of. Since I moved into my new studio two months ago, I'm just obsessed with it again.
EMC: So many great things in store. Anything else you are really excited about?
JD: I just bought this old Victorian home which I'm turning into a studio on the first floor, apartment on the top. I'm setting up my own live/work space, which is a lifelong dream.
EMC: Oh wow! Remind me of where you live.
JD: So my requirements were "two hours from New York City, in nature,” so I'm technically in Connecticut now. I really fell in love with the house. But it's nice because I can still go down to New York City for a day. I'm still close to Wassaic where I was doing my residency, where I have a nice group of friends. But yeah, so that's what I'm really excited about. I'm also going to be in a group show at the Samuel Dorsky Museum and I'm just exhibiting paintings there, which feels exciting! I also have some other group shows right now. There’s one at ArtPort Kingston, which is a group show and another group show that is on view until August 15, as well as a group show at Studio Hill Gallery in Connecticut that will be on view also until August 15. When I was in grad school two years ago now, which feels crazy, a lot of professors were installation-based, and in my head I felt like that was the highest form of art. But now being out of school and seeing a lot of art in New York City and having a wider group and community of art friends, I feel like I’m much more interested in the individual sculpture or painting. I think moving forward, that's the direction I'm more excited about. I think installation is amazing and creating them every now and again sounds like an exciting challenge, but I don’t want to use those as a crutch anymore to emulate an idea.
EMC: Was there something that happened that turned that focus for you? Has your painting impacted that at all?
JD: Definitely. I feel like with the installation what I was trying to do is create this feeling and space for my sculpture to exist in, but now I’ve found I can do a similar thing with my paintings.
EMC: I love that.
JD: Initially, I was trying to create this unique world with my installations—now I feel excited about painting it.