STATEMENT
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For much of my career, I made abstractions. Directing my gaze inward, I relied on my imagination. Insect skeletons, diatoms in the deep sea, the warped space of the cosmos, architectural CAD drawings were inspirational jumping off points. Using the repetition of a tiny modular form, usually a circle or line, my drawings mimicked the way I imagined nature, at the cellular level, would grow and change. I was fascinated by the way a tiny modular unit could become a larger abstract structure. I thought of my work in terms of both microcosmic and macrocosmic figuration; proportion, space, movement, time, growth and change were the paramount considerations.
In 2020, my work went through a major shift.
The Covid pandemic forced a retreat to the interior space of home/studio, keeping away from people until a vaccine was developed. Inside most of the time, I found myself wanting and needing to gaze outward. Hourly activities included looking through windows of phone, computer, TV and home, maintaining an alertness and awareness of a capsizing world so frightening finding solace seemed impossible. Threats from disease, climate change and a democracy in crisis fostered voracious reading and vigilantly viewing images of political crises throughout the planet.
During this time, I found a bit of comfort in daily walks. Walking in Kenneth Hahn Park, the Los Angeles Arboretum, the wetlands of Playa del Rey, the beaches of Venice and Santa Monica restored calm. Taking pictures of everything I connected to and found moving, both outdoors and indoors became necessary and powerful.
Most importantly, my photographs created an archive reminding me of ‘abundance’ in a world full of loss. In the studio, I mined images from my photo archive, as well as from the internet and print media. I used my home printer to make color inkjet prints of my digital images, and began a different way of making art. Collaging fragments of inkjet prints, torn or cut, combined with colored and textured papers and tape, became my primary medium.
Today, I continue to make collages. They are the ongoing result of my outward looking. I think of my collages as a weaving together of all kinds of images flora and fauna, domestic settings, architecture and political and ecological events. While I am creating my own narrative, my goal is also to give the viewer an abundant field from which to create their own story.
BIO
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Jacqueline Freedman lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. Freedman’s collages evoke narratives of contemporary political issues framed by and conjoined with iterations of nature. Within her works, the chaos and abundance of nature act as both a mirror of and a counter-narrative to political images reminding the viewer that while frightening issues of ecological disaster and terrifying government actions abound they are enfolded, subsumed, and potentially mitigated through direct engagement with the abundance in our world.
Freedman collages together fragments of digital inkjet prints primarily from her own photo archive, including the occasional internet image, combined with colored and textured papers, fragments of her own drawings and paintings and colored tape. The result is a complex tapestry of images encouraging the viewer to take time to explore and construct their own political and personal imaginative narratives.
Her works have been exhibited at galleries and institutions nationally and internationally, including a solo show at Los Angeles Harbor College, curated by Ron Linden, Another Year in LA gallery, curated by Cathy and David Stone, Los Angeles International Airport and Eagle Rock Arts Center both curated by John David O’Brien and the International Arts Fair in Galway, Ireland, curated by Patrick Graham.