Meet Jen Coon
Artist Biography
Jen Coon is interested in printmaking as a way of generating interesting marks and unique works on paper that have much in common with painting.
In serial monoprints, Jen combines Eastern and Western techniques where pigment is suspended in either oil or water, then applied to the matrix and transferred onto paper. These processes result in surfaces with different properties and can sometimes be at technical odds. In this case, she enjoys both proactive strategy and responding to factors as they change.
Originally from Western NY, she holds a BFA from the State University of New York at Purchase. Growing up, she came to question identity and social constructs at a time (during the '80's) when manifestations of Queerness and “otherness” were more stigmatized and marginalized. This mindset continues to inform her searching, restless approach to process and point of view.
Jen studied printmaking at UNC-Chapel Hill and learned the Moku Hanga technique at Penland School of Craft. She has exhibited at venues across the state, including the North Carolina Museum of Art, where she is employed in Visitor Experience. She practices art at Blam! Studios and lives in Raleigh, NC with her partner, Sophie, and their two cats.
Artist Statement
It stretches my imagination to design and develop a print; to carve a block or ink a surface with the aim of generating particular shapes and marks, which I then puzzle into a composition.
It exercises my problem solving skills to respond to the unexpected -- which is simply a built-in component of printmaking! The end result may be a sensuous, graphic conjuring of three dimensional surface (a tabletop marked with fingerprints and cup rings -- and whatever emotions that may carry) or a more complex conjuring of ideas through use of pattern, language, photographs, household objects, or articles of clothing.
I want to find out what can happen in this moment of recording a surface; what presence or action can be implied or postulated. The actions of preparing and pressing an object can raise ideas in and of themselves. These forces can cause physical change to the block, which can become a kind of documentary.
I try to keep the process flexible enough to support repeatability (when desired) as well as risk-taking and discovery. I find the work to be an absorbing feedback loop that demands not only skill and ingenuity, but courage and poetic imagination.
- Jen Coon 11/2024
Image: Signature of the artist, Jen Coon