News & Events
Small Worlds on the Brink: Professor Jenna Spevack’s Recent Exhibition and Artist Residencies
Spevack in Budapest
Artist and City Tech Department of Entertainment Technology Professor Jenna Spevack is exhibiting large-scale graphite and gouache drawings at the Hendershot Gallery in the Chelsea Art District of Manhattan, January 22 through March 7, 2009. She will be giving an artist talk at the gallery on March 7 at 1 p.m.
Spevack’s recent work was influenced by her experiences in Hungary, Austria, Finland, Estonia and the New York State Platte Clove wilderness this past summer. She was awarded three artist residencies from the Hungarian Multicultural Center in Budapest, the Estonian Artists' Association in Tallinn, and the Catskill Center for Conservation and Development’s Platte Clove Artists-in-Residence Program.
The residencies provide artists with opportunities to experiment and explore new directions in their work and facilitate the cultural exchange of ideas and experiences. The residency in Budapest concluded with a public artist talk and exhibitions at Vizivarosi Gallery and Mucius Galéria in Budapest. The Platte Clove residency – a cabin situated in the historic wilderness area where the Hudson River School art movement began – culminates in an upcoming exhibit at the Erpf Gallery in Arkville, NY. The residency in Tallinn allowed Spevack to discover the rich and storied history of Estonia, including the excavated medieval wall outside her studio window, and, most profoundly for the artist, the Soviet occupation.
Spevack’s finely rendered drawings, presented at the Hendershot Gallery, focus on the concept of survival in shifting natural and social-political environments using invented narratives that investigate ideas of interconnectedness, impermanence and the interaction of forces, both observable and invisible. With stimulus from overheard conversations, historical events, scientific equations and archeological remains, the work parallels our precarious relationship to the natural world – and sometimes to one another – through delicate depictions of barely balanced structures made of sticks, stone and string.
Liminal Equation A (for Survival) DETAIL
Spevack has developed a precise drawing and painting technique to achieve the subtle appearance of her drawings. Using mechanical graphite pencils and a fine brush she realized each 3x6-foot image over a three-month period starting with the simple definition of a ground and sky. She then fashioned interrelated structures and contraptions, object by object, which appear to be on the brink of collapse.
“I like to play with the dichotomy of what is possible or impossible. I am always looking for the tipping point,” says Spevack. “When viewers ask me if these structures could exist in real-life, I like to respond, ‘maybe.’ Anything is possible in my small world on the brink, which is precisely why I make drawings.”
For more information on Spevack’s work, visit www.jennaspevack.com or www.hendershotgallery.com.
02.25.09
