"Ultrasuede Wave". Sofa, oil stick, glazed ceramic. 2015.
April Baer / OPB
A canny painter and ceramicist, Jessica Jackson Hutchins has a way of embedding intimacy, notions of control, and home life into her constructions. By splashing paint across familiar furniture and orderly patterns, she injects the flavor of chaos and organic mayhem that lies beneath the surface in even the most orderly home. We stopped into her Portland studio to talk about the collection of Hutchins' works bursting the seams of Reed College's Cooley Gallery (don't miss the witty array of Hutchins' objects on view in the adjacent library), and the Lumber Room in downtown Portland.
"Might". Wood, fabric, oil paint, watercolor, chair, ink, glazed ceramic. 2015. An upturned chair and scrawls of paint suggest the chaos ever-present in seemingly ordinary domestic spheres.
April Baer / OPB
On her feel for ceramics:
Most of my work is very intuitive. It’s very playful and it’s very physical and very direct. I like to directly engage the materials. I like accident. I like impulse to be reflected in the final product.
On the lived-in feel of her constructions:
The marks and the worn-out chairs are there very intentionally. They are there to reflect the intimacy that I think we share when we share experiences through these objects. Everybody can have a body awareness of the chair. It’s now a pedestal for the ceramic, but is still a chair that your body and my body know. It has this kind of presence we can relate to so much.
On the influence of home and the domestic sphere:
When I first started making work in graduate school I was drinking a lot of beer so I made work using beer bottles. I’ve made whole bodies of work made out of coffee cups after I had kids. For me, it’s about a dialogue between common objects, the fact that all these objects around us have a resonance. Through using them, I create a syntax of meaning. So “chair” means “pedestal,” and it also means “cradling.” It also has this obvious functional usefulness that then is subverted. It’s no longer useful to hold your body, but it’s useful to hold a ceramic.
On manipulating function:
I hope to suggest this contemplative usefulness, to change how we think about function. We as people anthropomorphize things so quickly. So two bottles next to each other is a couple, it’s a conversation. A salvaged chair is redemption. Art has a contemplative value that’s really crucial and I want to underscore that through these objects.
