Homogeny of thought is boring, and dangerous:
Artist Statement
by Jim Jeffers, intermedia artist
I make intermedia work confounding simple formal concerns with the labored tangle of human thoughts and interaction, engaging 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, performance, video, photography, installation, and web art, all at the nexus of conventional and new media: intermedia, coined by artist Dick Higgins, is my preferred descriptor. 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.
A 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 and does in describing what I do instead of fixedly planting my flag exclusively in one of my reoccurring tropes — like: cultural questioning; sensual aesthetics; rabbits; formal structure; flight and airplanes; protective gear and gas masks; basic elements, fire, wood, water, soil, chalk; paint; movement; sound; or seductively simple interactive code-art — is not to deny my love of specific themes, ideas, materials, and ways and means, but to allow for a capriciousness, a flexibility in my creative production free from strict media genuflection. To have too firm a stance in any arena makes one all too easy a target for knockdown. However, this fluidity comes at the expense of firm location within fiercely patrolled disciplines, complete peer comprehension, and overwrought dogma, save that homogeneity of thought is boring, and dangerous (see: the Events of 9-11, http://www.911digitalarchive.org as proof).
Appendix: On 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 a 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 mere 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., I know the Polish word "ser" for "cheese" because I traveled by air to experience shopping in a Warsaw cheese shop and learning the word; completely remarkable and totally mundane simultaneously). 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, Jim Jeffers' Fortress of Multitude: Project 52 for 2010—and other Fantabiographies opened in early February 2011, at MEME Gallery in Cambridge, MA. Jeffers is currently an Assistant Professor of Art & 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 beautiful wife Jean. Jim is a founding member of Printer on Prescott Arts Research
Collaborative & Artist Studios in the heart of historic downtown Lowell, MA where he works.
