Jennifer Fernandez
Shoreline, Washington
Website
www.jfernandez.art
Social Media
Instagram
How would you describe your work?
My work right now is twofold – I work as a painter and I do ceramic sculpture work. My paintings are landscapes of places that exist internally. In other words, they’re landscapes of abstract emotional states – loneliness, being lost, searching. I use a lot of graphic shapes — numbers, lines, circles, and the like to create maps of these emotional landscapes.
My ceramic work is a little similar in that I don’t work in creating realistic shapes or forms, but rather, the pieces evoke the feeling of a place or time. I’m currently working on a series of sculptures that call back to a sort of retrofuturism. I’ve created abstract shapes that are the feeling of what we may have imagined living on the moon would be like. So, like the paintings, they're shapes that exist internally, in an emotional state, in this case our hope for a future radically different from our present.
What inspires you?
I notice shapes a lot. When I’m out driving around town I’ll notice shapes everywhere I go. Just yesterday I was enamored by the long curve of a commercial light post above a bail bondsman’s sign downtown. It was great! But there’s a lot to look at and admire all around. I love hand lettered signage, especially the old school kind on storefront windows. Also, brickwork, manhole covers, doorways.
Can you speak about your process?
Whether it’s painting or ceramic work, I never start with an idea. I find that when I do that it’s less interesting for me. Rather, I let the process inform my next step. In a painting I might respond to a shape that I make. The next shape or line I make responds to the last one, so on. With the ceramic pieces I might start making a pinch pot or coil a shape and then I keep building or shaping until something happens and by that I mean, that the shape I make reminds me of something. Then I go from there.
How did you become interested in art?
I remember the first time I went to a modern art museum. I was probably fourteen or so and was visiting a friend who’d moved from Miami (where I grew up) to Montclair, New Jersey. When her mother left for work, we’d take the bus into Manhattan and just putter around the city until it was time to head back so we could beat her mom home. One day my friend said she wanted to go to MoMA and I just went along with it. I didn’t know what MoMa was but I pretended to know. When we got there, boy, my earth shook. I saw my very first Jackson Pollock in person and I about fell over. Pollock was my gateway drug. That first trip to MoMA opened me up to seeking out more and more art. When I went back home I started checking out art books and documentaries from the library. But it all started with that first trip.
Do you have any favorite artists, movies, books or quotes?
My favorite local artist is definitely Warren Dykeman. I never don’t want to see what he’s done or is working on. He’s a graphic designer and it comes through in his work so clearly. But more than that, I just feel it deeply. I’m so moved by his work. Other contemporary painters I’ve really been enjoying lately are Francisco Mendes Moreira and Amy Sillman. Vincent Hawkins is fantastic too. Ceramicists I love include Godeleine de Rosamel and Yoko Hishikawa.
Movies, boy I could go on for days about movies. I enjoy high/low art so I’m happy to watch Bergman or Jarmusch, but I’m just as happy watching something a little more light and funny. I can watch Heartburn anytime day or night, and I’ve got the entirety of You’ve Got Mail memorized. Sometimes I’ll have it playing in the background while I paint.
As far as books go, my favorite book is Moby Dick. I love the richness of its commentary and analysis – the vastness of the unknown and why it’s so important to embrace it, as opposed to the restriction and limitation of what is known, there’s also a great analysis of class and of love for the other. Melville struck a chord with me early with that book. I’ve got a tattoo of a sperm whale emerging out of the sea on my upper arm. But lately I’ve really enjoyed reading nonfiction books about failed expeditions and explorations. Basically anything on a ship where there’s adversity is right up my alley.
What advice do you have for younger artists?
I grew up in a family of immigrants who didn’t really see artistic work as pragmatic work. It wasn’t something that was encouraged as a career and I certainly never saw artists or a life of art modeled for me, so I didn’t really think that life was for me. It always seemed like something for someone else. It took me a long time to come around to thinking that I could be an artist. So I would say, just cause you don’t see it around you doesn’t mean it’s not for you. The world is yours! Hold on to the things that make you curious and that light you up, even if it seems like they’re not meant for you. They are! Claim them!
