Jacquelyn Gleisner holds an M.F.A. from the Cranbrook Academy of Art and a B.F.A. with honors
from Boston University. Jacquelyn was awarded a Fulbright grant to Finland in 2010
to study pattern and surface design across fashion, architecture, and fine art. In
2015 she was invited to participate in an artist's exchange in Botswana through the
Art in Embassies Program.
Jacquelyn gave public lectures and workshops in Gaborone and Maun over ten days and
her painting, Scroll VII, 2015, was included in a three-year curated exhibition at
the residence of the U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Botswana, Earl R. Miller.
In addition to her studio practice, Jacquelyn writes about contemporary art and has
been a regular contributor to the Art21 Magazine since 2011. She has launched two
columns for the site, "Praxis Makes Perfect" and "New Kids on the Block." She was
the Guest Editor of the Sincerity Issue (Volume 11, July/August 2015).
Her works have been shown abroad in Italy, Finland, and Botswana and in the United
States, especially throughout the New England area.
Artist Statement
I am interested in patterns, surface design, and decoration. The impulse to decorate
and embellish is present in ancient textiles and other forms of handicraft. Yet throughout
history, cultural perceptions of ornament, color, and decoration have varied. Patterns
and color have the ability to conflate or open space, to entice or repel a viewer.
In 2014 I began developing a series of scrolls, based on patterns that mimic weavings
and other forms of handiwork. The scrolls represent a harmony of opposites, a union
of aesthetic traditions rooted in both craft and fine art contexts with references
to tropes of abstract painting, especially from the 1960s and 1970s. Explicitly created
on paper—a material structure that is accessible yet fragile—these scrolls are photographed
in natural and constructed environments. Inside a parking garage or on a bed of snow,
the scrolls become interwoven in a community and a specific setting, presenting alternative
narratives about how paintings exist in this world. Recent iterations of the scrolls
have been repurposed into site-specific installations. By reusing older works, the
structure of my practice becomes a pattern and repetitive cycle of creation and destruction.
Awards & Grants
2015 Artist Exchange, Art in Embassies Program, Botswana, Africa
2010 William J. Fulbright Post Graduate Research Grant, Helsinki, Finland
2010 Aalto University, Visiting Researcher, Helsinki, Finland
Artist-In-Residence / Residencies
2016 Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Amherst, VA
2016 A.I.R. Studio Paducah, Kentucky
2014 Studio 550, Manchester, New Hampshire
Selected Solo Exhibitions / Installations
2017 Folds of the Cloak, Sharon Arts Center, Peterborough, NH
2017 Paper Over, Artspace, New Haven, CT
2017 Ouroboros, Mazmanian Gallery, Framingham State University, MA
2016 Pop Up Show, Downtown Rochester, NH. (Organized by the Rochester Museum of Fine
Arts, Rochester, NH)
2014 Sunshine Art & Design Gallery, Lancaster, PA
2011 Galleria Atski, Aalto University, Helsinki, Finland
Selected Group Installations
2017 Interaction of Color, Ann Street Gallery, Newburgh, NY
2016 Studio 550, Manchester, NH
2015 Art in Embassies, Botswana, Africa
2015 Minumental, New Hampshire Institute of Art, Manchester, NH
2014 Flat Files Year Two, TSA Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
2014 The Principle of the Thing, Daylight Savings Gallery / Sadie Halie Gallery, Brooklyn,
NY
2014 Parallel Grounds, Daylight Savings Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
2011 Artists of Fulbright, FinnFest
2011, San Diego, CA
2010 Out of the Woods, M.F.A. Thesis Exhibition, Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit,
Detroit, MI
2010 Daimler Financial Services One Year Collection, Farmington Hills, MI
Symposiums / Conferences / Panels
2017 CAA Conference, Presentation: "The Writing Artist," New York, NY
2011 America in Living Color, Speaker – Contemporary Finnish Textile Design, Tampere,
Finland
2010 American Voices xviii, Lecturer, Turku University, Turku, Finland
Selected Publications
"In Poor Taste," Jani Leinonen: Funeral Notice. Galerie Gmurzynska: Zurich, 2011.
Knuckles, Dawud and Russell Simmons, eds. The Art Album: Hip Hop And The Visual Arts. Fiell Publishing Limited: New York, 2012.
Woolston, Samuli, ed. The Aalto Ornament Studio: Theory as a Design Tool, Ornament in Architecture, A Research
Based Design Studio, Aalto University, School of Engineering, Department of Architecture: Helsinki, 2011.
Selected Press
"Art Teacher's Lengthy Installation Challenges Assumptions about Art," West Hartford
News, February 2, 2017.
Conant, Ben. (2017, June). "Making Her Point." Monadnock Ledger-Transcript.
Slater, David. (2016, February). "Art in Embassies." Peolwane, 59 - 65.
Collections / Commissions
Private collections (USA): AR, CT, FL, GA, MA, MI, NY, WA
Kathy Battista, Program Director, Sotheby’s Institute New York
U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Botswana, Earl R. Miller