Jennifer is always a bit at a loss with the question 'Are you an Artist?' and usually side-steps it with 'I just like to make things.' She will, however, readily admit to being 'a compulsive maker' and, if pressed, 'a gardener'.
Being a very mature student at art school was a challenge for Jennifer as all information was new, and even the language was strange. She remembers quietly asking an experienced student what was meant by 'form and content'. Any other department might have failed her, but her life-long thanks go to her teacher, Petr Herel, who saw something worth nurturing. Jennifer graduated from the Graphic Investigation Department of Canberra School of Art in 1981.
Jennifer has earned the label `oh, you do that weird stuff' with works like her documented Automated Walk (above) when she obeyed the traffic lights at the four-way pedestrian crossing at St James Station in Elizabeth Street, Sydney for 8 hours; those vital hours between 9 and 5 when we become automata in work-places. And the audio-visual On the Edge using the sound of a metronome measured against her own heart-beat (after a quick run around the block).
After Jennifer moved to Narooma in 2001 she took time to play, to do trials, to make mistakes, to enter competitions, and to be part of the creative and supportive community.
As the captioned images show, Jennifer's practice is driven by an idea, linked to her curiosity to explore whatever materials and processes serve that idea, and with the title being an integral part of the work.
Above: 'The Hollow Men'; human over-population; the last few lines of the poem are "this is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper".
Above: 'The Last of Me'; over the past few years Jennifer has been making large installation works concerning extinction of species and the conditions and consequences around that.
