Jessica Kreutter

In Residence: January 9 - March 2, 2012Exhibition: Opens Thursday, March 1Exhibition continues through March 16, 2012Learning Lab: ArtLabsomewheres left behindOpens March 1, 5:30 - 8pmThere is something eerie, almost frighteningly beautiful about the work of Creative Resident Jessica Kreutter, whose exhibition Somewheres left behind opens March 1. A ceramic and mixed media artist, Kreutter creates small fragmented installations using found, discarded objects and porcelain. The gallery is transformed into still, suspended moments, where eviscerated forms, at times encrusted by ornamentation, twist and ooze, questioning what is inside the body and what is out.Jessica states, “There is a potency held within the spaces that are in-between. These spaces suggest there is something more than what our world has been divided up into, a place between reality and fantasy, a point at which opposing ideas overlap. These moments where boundaries are breached or intersect evoke the possibility of seeing the world differently.” It is impossible to be a casual observer, as the ambiguous forms, stunningly rendered in porcelain, seduce you to come closer—fetish-like, sensual, haunting.Included in the exhibition are works by sixteen ArtLab interns who have worked in concert with Jessica exploring the concepts of reality and fantasy. The teens have translated personal experiences into distinct body representations or fragments rendered in clay, and integrated with found objects. Their work inhabits the gallery creating a pathway through the fragile dream-like space, hovering on the rim of what is acceptable and what is not, of life and death, of remembering and forgetting. Kreutter: “In this fragile moment, I want to imagine what materializes from these shadows left behind and the body that would exist in these ruins”Jessica has an MFA in Ceramics from the University of Tennessee, has broad teaching experience with children, adults and developmentally disabled individuals at a community arts center and at universities. Plus she has been a resident artist at ART342, The Vermont Studio Center, Anderson Ranch and Houston Center for Contemporary Craft. Jessica's website.