Featured Artist: Jeff Mann

While a resident artist at a college in 2005, Jeff discovered car parts which are mass produced in an incredible variety with built-in complexity and they have became the main material in his work. While still incorporating car parts and car based patterns, recent explorations in the last year and a half have led him in unexpected directions.

Prior to March of 2020, the artist worked with metal almost exclusively welding, grinding, cutting and hammering the material to achieve a desired effect. But during the pandemic, with only online options available to show his work, the artist began assembling “constructions” using sculpture, paintings and masks that he created. Using photography and digital manipulation, the artist’s work has been rapidly evolving. Drawing on his infatuation with graphic novels, Jeff has been adding text to his work and creating “covers” for an imaginary comic series.

Digital manipulation fits in well with the artist’s creative process. “The Response Creative Process” begins with no preconceived narrative or image in mind. Through a kind of dance with car parts he follows the ghost of a direction and focuses it to bring, in the case of a mask, a character into being. The artist believes there are too many cars in the world and cars have affected our aesthetic making it difficult for us to be cognoscente of the great damage being done by our addiction to automotive transportation.

Featured Piece:

Enamel Rain