Featured Artist: Jean Wolff

My practice involves the creation of subtle order through the use of strong patterns and grids.

Working with a wide range of media on canvas, paper and wood, I create a unique visual language through an ongoing process of exploration and experimentation.The work is built on an evolving set of interrelations, rather than just a system of theme and variations.

Weaving and textiles provide inspiration in the employment of the grid and linear structure of my work. The basic tenants of “warp and weft” of weaving are one foundation of my artistic practice. Light, color, texture and space have been re-employed through exposure to historical and contemporary art from many cultures and contemporary artists. Textiles that I have seen in my travels – Berber textiles in Morocco, Native American Navaho chief blankets in the Western United States, Talismanic shirts in the Topkapi Museum in Instanbul and the local women’s weaving collectives of various Greek Islands have inspired my work in the use of their patterning and structure. Looking at these various art forms – in craft, painting and sculpture – have had a profound effect on my work, process and thinking.

These systems that I employ within a grid and linear format have developed from a methodical exploration of this basic structure and its subsequent construction and deconstruction. This methodology also creates a grid in different ways by utilizing the unique qualities of each of the materials employed. These “threads” of ideas arise from finding materials or cast offs in the studio. Examples include – cross cut lengths of lumber reconfigured into gridded compositions, paintings constructed of folded canvas that is painted and re-stretched to then add an additional overlay grid and painting reliefs of dowel rods placed in neat rows and painted systematically as a series. With the exception of the canvases, each of the various series is completed once the materials are exhausted. Although the rigor of the compositions of the various grid structures could be static and rigid, this is broken by the handmade touch on each of the individual works. The repeated exploration of the materials within each work means that the final artwork is not just an image, but also an articulation of the space it occupies.