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We’re in era of blur. The boundaries between work and home have been col-
lapsed, domesticity fractured. I use household objects, supplies, and textiles as source material for drawings, prints and paintings, rendering them into abstract shapes and patterns. I find inspiration in cakepans, in cookie cutters, in frosting, in wallpaper, in tablecloths and potholders, in kids’ art supplies, in discarded packaging, in endless clutter.
I delight in the ornamental, drawing patterns and turning them into matrices
for prints, which I tile and collage into larger works, and then further embellish
with drawing, sewn elements, and gouache. Drawing from the languages of
quiltmaking, and geometric abstraction, the works are are an unrestrained
layering of pattern on pattern on pattern.
Historically, quiltmaking is rife with paradox: it is domestic labor reliant on
industrialization; conjuring a make-do ethos, yet established in abundance.
Indeed today, the handmade is increasingly fetishized, even as physical labor
is devalued. And yet handmade vs manufactured is a false dichotomy.
I use mechanical processes like risograph to translate handmade processes (stitching, quilting, embroidery): crafting by means of outdated office technology, working back and forth until the distinction between the hand and the machine is blurred. The work embodies the pleasures of color, pattern, and craft, but also the brokenness of the present, as the blocks of pattern fall in and out of repetition, interrupted before they can complete themselves.
Jacquelyn Strycker is a Brooklyn/Queens-based artist working primarily in
printmaking and fibers-based media. She is concerned with the relationship
between decoration and function, and invested in material exploration and
handicraft. Strycker has a BA in Visual Arts from Columbia University, and an
MFA from Tyler School of Art. She is presently a faculty member at Pratt Insti-
tute and School of Visual Arts.
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