On View: at the FATVillage Projects November 10 - December 11, 2018
IS Projects presents Jeanne Jaffe’s solo exhibition of paper sculpture, shaped prints and an artist book. Each exhibited print contains a fragment of a refrain from the life of a child; from lullabies, the lord’s prayer, old sayings, and pledges. Before I Wake forms a poem that deals with loss and the dark underbelly contained within nursery rhymes, prayers and other fragments.
The cover of Jaffe’s artist book are two large embossed hands that includes the phrase from the lord’s prayer “If I should die, Before I wake” and hold five, shaped prints. The five prints inside contain phrases: I pledge allegiance, When the bough breaks, Spilt Milk, My soul to Take and Ashes, Ashes, We all fall down. The exhibted sculptures are from Jaffe’s “Pre-verbal Series”, dealing with forms related to the body before language is acquired and when the world is fused, not yet separate and distinct.
Jeanne Jaffe is Professor Emeritus in Multi-disciplinary Fine Arts at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, a visiting artist/professor at Xian Academy of Fine Arts in China each fall and the coordinator of International Projects at the Jaffe Center for Book Arts. Jaffe is the recipient of various grants, including fellowships from the Gottlieb Foundation for Outstanding Artistic Development, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Mid Atlantic/NEA, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, the Leeway Foundation, the Independence Foundation, and Mino Artist Residency in Japan, among others. Works by Jaffe have been exhibited both nationally and internationally at such places as the Seokdang Museum of Art in South Korea, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art Museum in Philadelphia, the Delaware Art Museum, Hillwood Art Museum, Mino Washi Akari Museum in Japan, Michener Art Museum, The Royal Scottish Academy of Edinburgh, Scotland, and London Craft Council Gallery in England. Her work has been reviewed extensively, including in Art in America, The New York Times, and Sculpture Magazine.