Every Tuesday afternoon we’re featuring the work of an visual artist to support their cultivation of an audience, to give sight into their often unseen studio practice, and to build a diverse roster of artists from which you may reference. This Tuesday our feature covers mixed-media, assemblage artist Jeremy Grant. In learning about Grant’s conceptual framework, it became increasingly apparent that questions of “what ought to be” and what “ought not to be” consistently collide in his object-making, and do is in excellent form.
Jeremy Grant’s Bio: Jeremy Grant is an emerging artist and award-winning graphic designer. His found-object assemblages have been exhibited in two-person and juried shows regionally in Colorado. Jeremy is married to an author, has two beautiful babies and loves Jesus, bourbon and robots.
Jeremy at work in the studio.
Statement about the recent series LIFE>>>through>>>DEATH: Sacrifice, difficulty and even death often precede the blossoming of new, more richly varied life. The poet Hopkins says “See how Spring opens with disabling cold,” and the Christian scriptures offer an analogy of a grain of wheat that “falls into the earth and dies, but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” In this ambitious new body of work, I am embodying these ideas using an eclectic mix of collage, resin and found objects which I have destroyed, broken up and re-assembled into more rich and varied groupings. A timeline element exists in each of these pieces suggesting the journey of birth to death. Organic, blossoming elements speak to the idea of overcoming adversity, of strength found through suffering and of life after death.
From Jeremy: “In 2005, I began to collect junk. While others were content to let bottle caps, rusty washers and old keys decay in gutters, I wasn’t. Something in these odd, cast-off bits of junk intrigued me. Building on a foundation of 15 years of art making and education, I began to assemble wall-hanging sculptures, shadow boxes and free-standing sculptures from the junk I had collected.
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Objects carry associations. People viewing my art will often recognize the objects I am using and tell me the associations they have with those pieces. “I remember having one of those toys as a child,” or “I use those bolts everyday in my job.” Those associations are important to me, and I create art as much to tell a story as to convey an idea.
As I continue to create, I am following the theme of redemption. Redemption being that act of finding or revealing the full worth of something or someone. I believe that meaning, beauty and worth are often found in unexpected places, and so I am looking in unexpected places.”
Images from the Ordinary Saints Series
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More of Jeremy’s work can be seen here.
