Jessica Smolinski
Cover Me with the Sea
2023
Inspired by the overlap of form and function, and the acts of making and caring, my work merges traditional domestic crafts with photography and sculpture. Using photography, I document serendipitous moments of day-to-day family life, evidence of changing seasons and natural life cycles. The images act as a bridge between life and death where the preciousness and impermanence of life is in constant focus.
My studio practice is woven into the balance of my life as an artist and a working mother, and I am motivated by patterns and designs created by cultures and generations before me. I approach photos like fabric, cutting and recomposing imagery to form new, fragmented relationships.
In Cover Me with the Sea, 2023, I quilted four banners using pre-owned windsurf sails. I chose the sails because of their vibrant colors, patterns, resilience, and connection to the landscape. Quilting the once-loved sails gives them a second life as they wave in the wind and salt air. The notions of care, hope and renewal are present in the re-contextualized forms.
About the Artist
Jessica Smolinski (b. 1976, Oyster Bay, NY) explores concepts of life cycles, time, memory, and traditional domestic crafts, all grounded in photography. Jessica received her MFA from the University of Connecticut in Storrs, CT in 2001. Her work has been exhibited most recently at the Wassaic Project (Wassaic, NY) and Jennifer Terzian Gallery (Litchfield, CT). Jessica has been an artist in residence at the Wassaic Project and works as the Documentation Photographer at the Yale University Art Gallery (New Haven, CT). In addition to her museum work, she’s taught various art courses at colleges throughout CT and NY.