Homogeny of thought is boring, and dangerous:
Artist Statement
by Jim Jeffers, artist
I make intermedia work confounding the easy connective-ness of formal concerns with the labored tangle of human thoughts and interaction, and the capricious natures of synchronicity, déjà vu, and serendipitous phenomena; which give one hope. Expressed through a fluid performed practice — in my mind unrestricted by media or medial hegemony — ranging across discrete objects, photography, video, performance, installation, and web-art at the nexus of conventional and computational media. My work's focus is quiet, hyperbolic ambition, adding layer upon layer creating a larger meaning / story / drawing / experience-body: a Fantabiography — finding balance between lived life, and imagined or fantasy life. Forming clouds of artist slough, and moments of clarity in the process.
True story: my parents’ Christmas cards sometime before I was born (1966-1972). Imagine white cards embossed with a silver dove and text reading, "Peace on Earth" on the cover. You open the card to reveal, "Fuck War!"At the core of my work is a relationship of images / meaning in context setting routines of creative revelation. Perhaps, covering the generalities of what art is / does in describing what I do instead of fixedly planting my flag — in: cultural questioning; sexy exploits; rabbits / bunnies; formal structure; flight / airplanes; gas masks; fire; wood; paint; movement; sound; and dangerously simple interactive code-art — is not to deny my love of specific themes / ideas / materials / ways and means, but to allow for a capriciousness, a flexibility. To have too firm a stance in any arena makes one all too easy a target for knock-down. However, this comes at the expense of firm location, complete peer comprehension, and overwrought dogma save this: homogeny of thought is boring, and dangerous (see: the Events of 9-11, http://www.911digitalarchive.org).
Appendix: Meaning
Political and philosophical, my work is at its core asking questions of us. I am most interested in the discussion, but lately I feel desynchronized to audience requests for tidy solutions, or conversely hyper-messy entanglements. Airplanes. Let’s take airplanes as an example of a singular reoccurring trope in my work. What does it mean? Airplanes and aircraft are revolutionary, and are really the lynchpin of global culture. From eco-tourism to the custom iPod, from the business traveler to fire raining down from the sky on a remote village in Asia, aircraft are at the heart of this intercourse. Now I think about this, but having become aware of the world at the end of the Cold War, and living near Lowry Air Force Base, and up the road from N.O.R.A.D., and down the road from S.A.C., and just miles away from Rocky Flats Nuclear Arsenal, and having my first intracontinental plane ride at the age of 2, the Airplane is a part of me and my story, braided as grand conveyance and harbinger of Ragnarök equally. I can’t divorce myself from a symbol so pedestrian and profound that it changes the world everyday and remakes me on a regular basis(i.e., one could argue I know the Polish word "ser" for "cheese" because of air travel and my ability to experience shopping in a Warsaw cheese shop and learning the word). Struggling with body, performing everyday, attaching significance to the sordid and fundamentally psychoactive parts of ourselves, for me, brings together a universality of personal myth. Art is three-fifths a story of constituencies believing in two-fifths of the content and form of it.
Jim Jeffers short bio
Prof. Jim Jeffers was born in late winter in Denver, CO. He lived there for 15 years with his loving parents, Dr. Jim (1925-1992) and Lou (1932-1999), a psychologist turned holistic heath care practitioner and interior designer turned healthware sales person respectively. Jim attended the University of California - Santa Cruz, where he studied Physics and graduated with a B.A. in Art with emphasis in printmaking and drawing. Upon completion of his undergraduate course work, he attended New York University and graduated with a Master of Arts degree in Studio Art with emphasis in sculpture and printmaking. Jim spent the better part of the next two years in Encinitas, CA (north of San Diego) making art and cooking for his mother. He earned his M.F.A. from Rutgers University in 2000, and has taught at numerous institutions including: Rutgers University; Drew University; Seton Hall University; and NYU, just to name a few. He has exhibited work nationally and internationally. His last solo exhibition, Genii Loci (ghosts of protection) opened in early September 2009, at the University Gallery at The University of Massachusetts Lowell. Jeffers is currently an Assistant Professor of Art and Design, and head of the Web Art & Design Area in the Art Department at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. Jim lives in Lowell, MA with his wife Jean and their rabbits Uma and Logan. Jim is a founding member of Printer on Prescott Artist Studios in the heart of historic downtown Lowell, MA where he works.
