Jenny Ustick is an Assistant Professor of Practice and Foundations Coordinator in the School of Art, College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning at the University of Cincinnati, USA and a member of the collaborative group Maidens of the Cosmic Body Running. She was selected to be part of the Palimpsest Project [5], a mural painting residency that invites emerging artists to perform visual dialogues between the works of each other in the terrace of  ´ace. Jenny’s mural will add new images and conversations among previous interventions which were begun by the Colombian Felipe Garcia and continued by Kiik Create (Puerto Rico-USA), Buck Teeth Girls Club (Canada), ALMA (Brazil), Cosby Hayes (USA) and Toia Grehan (Argentina).

ARTIST STATEMENT

In the contexts of solo and public work, I move between considering myself as both an individual and representative of larger systems and histories. I am rooted in traditional approaches to drawing, painting, and mural making, but also use sculpture, installation, fibers, and time-based media. With an inward lens, I often return to self-portraiture and self-as-subject, considering generational history and meta-narrative. Facing outward, public work grows out of community engagement. The importance of meeting people, learning about the history of a community, and about the aspirations, pride, and sometimes mourning of its people is as important as the visual contribution. Each community and site offers a new opportunity to deepen one’s knowledge, affection, and connection to place and to others.

Recognizing that self-image is constructed in layers, fistulae, and fusions, recent solo work traces the genealogy of certain facets of popular culture: western fashion trends, literary and art-historical influences of the taste-makers shaping popular televisual and film culture, and appropriation. I see connections as far back as the emergence of a Baroque middle class, and the act of using consumption and display of acquisitions (of knowledge, of goods) to communicate sophistication and status. Recent and developing upheaval in American and European politics and the potential of history repeating itself are driving new work. I am focused on the power of symbols to create and enforce cultural myths and imagery that demonstrates our similarities as beings with simple motives and drives, even while we focus on differences.