Artist StatementAs a project based artist I pull from my own experience and the stories of others. This is investigated through material and display. The work combines moments of narrative into sculptures and paintings that represent a devastation of self-dom within love, fear and survival.
In sculpture quotidian objects are chosen that are of my own childhood, such as a bedpost or dollhouse furniture. These objects are then manipulated to question their original purpose and the reminiscent narratives of childhood. I insert personal biases, memories, hopes, and fears into my work in order to satirize and expose cultural assumptions about gender, sexuality, and power. The visual language of these narratives are then manipulated through aggressive action such as; slicing, burning, or tearing. These actions are left as apparent scars in the work allowing for necessity, sentiment and slapstick assemblage to charge the work. Within painting, patterns and layers expose the complexities of the narratives I meditate on. These layers come together in a playful yet sometimes difficult to look at discorded painting. The patterns service are bifold, they both represent the monotony of what a future as woman can represent (ie: repeated pot stirring or thousands of diaper changes) as well as serve to discombobulate the viewer and confuse narrative. These paintings focus in on the tumbling down of my own expectations of womanhood and the confusion of understanding a future that I control. |
AboutJaymee Harvey Willms is an artist living and working in the Milwaukee area of Wisconsin. She was born and raised in Maplewood, Minnesota. From there she moved to South Dakota where she received her BFA in painting and art history from the University of South Dakota. In 2015 she went on to graduate from SUNY Albany with her MFA in sculpture. She has had international residencies, shows her work across the United States, and continues to make work in her studio in Milwaukee’s Third Ward.
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