↓SUGGEST CORRECTIONS↓ JenMcCleary.com Art & Design — TheXFactory.com Webcrawled Links Con­tent retrieved from: JenMcCleary.com BIO Jen McCleary attend­ed Tyler School of Art (BFA Paint­ing and Print­mak­ing), Uni­ver­si­ty of the Arts (Con­tin­u­ing Edu­ca­tion in Print Design), and Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia (MLA). She works both dig­i­tal­ly and in tra­di­tion­al mixed-media col­lage and views the two seem­ing­ly dif­fer­ent media as com­pli­men­ta­ry and root­ed in the same process of col­lect­ing and arrang­ing images. In 2019 she began to learn the craft of wheel-thrown ceram­ics, which she alters through decoupage and the tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese art of kintsu­gi (repair­ing bro­ken items with gold and lac­quer). This process of cre­ation and destruc­tion con­sid­ers the inevitabil­i­ties of dam­age and heal­ing as part of the beau­ty of an object. She also works as a free­lance graph­ic design­er spe­cial­iz­ing in book cov­er and lay­out design. STATEMENT The roots of my art lie in the process of col­lect­ing images, ephemera, and found objects, which I lay­er, alter, or arrange to cre­ate some­thing com­plex and sym­bol­ic. I work both dig­i­tal­ly (pho­to-col­lage and graph­ic design) and in more tra­di­tion­al forms (mixed-media collage/painting and jew­el­ry made from found and vin­tage objects). No mat­ter the medi­um, I pre­fer to work intu­itive­ly, let­ting each piece evolve over time and in unex­pect­ed direc­tions. My work is more a form of med­i­ta­tion or play­ful explo­ration than a delib­er­ate attempt at com­mu­ni­cat­ing a con­cept, although I do believe that images and objects can act as car­ri­ers of mean­ing and emo­tion­al res­o­nance. My work is inspired by sci­ence, won­der, and dual­i­ties includ­ing manmade/natural worlds, light/dark (metaphor­i­cal­ly and lit­er­al­ly), creation/destruction, and complexity/simplicity. In 2019 I began to learn the craft of wheel-thrown ceram­ics, which I alter through decoupage and the tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese art of kintsu­gi (repair­ing bro­ken items with gold and lac­quer). For me, this process of cre­ation, destruc­tion, and repair mir­rors the ups and downs of life and treats the inevitabil­i­ties of dam­age and heal­ing as some­thing beau­ti­ful to be celebrated.