October+Necklace

Date: 2002
 * [[image:http://ids.si.edu/ids/deliveryService?id=http://americanart.si.edu/images/2003/2003.19_3a.jpg&max=460 width="322" height="323" link="@http://americanart.si.edu/collections/search/artwork/?id=71843"]] || Title: **October Necklace**

Artist: **Jennifer Trask** Born: Cape Cod, Massachusetts 1970

Medium: fabricated and constructed 18k royal gold, 18k green gold, 14k palladium, 22k gold with swallowtail, monarch, queen, and silvery checkerspot butterfly wings; yellow soil from Verona, Italy and Spain; red soil from Arizona; ring-necked pheasant feathers; guinea fowl feathers; iron filings; black sand; and rusted steel in mineral crystal and reticles Dimensions: 20 1/2 x 1 1/2 in. (52.1 x 3.8 cm) Smithsonian American Art Museum Museum purchase through the Renwick Acquisitions Fund

Accession: 2003.19 || Jennifer Trask invites the viewer to discover unexpected beauty in //October Necklace//. She conjures the displays of a European Wunderkammer (cabinet of wonders) or a Victorian collection, isolating minerals, insect wings, and feathers and placing them under glass in locket-sized cases. By focusing on the formal qualities of a material, Trask transforms natural specimens into abstract studies of color or texture.
 * About the Artwork (Official Text): **

Born on Cape Cod, Massachusetts in 1970, Trask attended Massachusetts College of Art completing her BFA in Metalsmithing in 1993 and later graduated the State University of NY at New Paltz with an MFA in 1997 She remains in the Hudson valley area where she is a full time studio artist.
 * Biographical Information: **
 * [[image:trask.jpg]] ||

My recent body of work from 2007, Unnatural Histories, delved into our precarious, at times, contentious, relationship with nature. We admire it, we attempt to collect, contain, and regulate it. Yet somehow we see ourselves as separate from it, beyond its reach and influence. In these objects the rift is visible in vines refusing containment, growth that confounds expectations. Branches sprout blossoms that return your gaze. Bones house seeds and grow leaves. Ornamental frameworks evolve into tendrils.
 * Artist's Statement: **

Deliberate arrangements of flora and fauna, mineral and vegetal, ornamental and intrinsic, coalesce as hybrids that refer to the remarkable ability of nature to adapt and evolve in any circumstance.

Used literally to express definitive physical sensation and emotional sentiment, (e.g.: “feel it in my bones” or “bone weary”) bone is considered the absolute reductive essence of our physical selves. Bones linger, sometimes discovered centuries later. While bones seem permanent, they evolve like any cell with an assigned function, bone will break down and re-form, and incorporate evidence of what we ate, how we worked, injuries, traumas, illnesses, and environmental conditions during our lifetime. Lead, copper and iron, among other metals, bind to our bones as obscure mementos of our experiences. What if these amalgams were to flourish and blur physical boundaries?
 * Down to the bone: **

My imagery is derived from my examination of the structures of plant and animal life, from the plainly visible down to microscopic patterns of growth in nature. What I found was a system of rigid elemental principles with a remarkably vast potential for invention and adaptation,that also lends itself to powerful visual metaphors. Each of the pieces fit into one of three powers of magnitude; hand sized (10-1), cellular (10-5 to 10-8), or atomic scale(10-10). The results are oddly metaphoric, unnatural histories, that embody both a peculiar passion for, and contentious relationship with, nature itself. My hope is that in a moment of visceral delight, or simply curiosity perhaps one might reclaim a sense of wonder, as to the purpose of such meticulous arrangements.

//Flourish//, from 2008, is a continuation, or, part two, of //Unnatural Histories//. In this series, the hybrids are not just cross-species but cross discipline as well. Flora and fauna thrive and outgrow containment metaphorically and literally.

"Bones and Blood Lurk Within..." - Smithsonian Magazine Jennifer Trask - Renwick Invitational 2016 essay Jennifer Trask
 * Resources: **

Artist Biography SAAM Collections Page
 * Links: **