Good Girl. Bad Girl. Good Bad Girl. Bad Good Girl. As you'll see verified later, one level of Jen's work involves commentary on gender roles. On the envelope is some (I think really nice) stampy-collage work exploring gender relations, specifically as power relations. She uses popcult references for this. What I really like here is how she integrates fabric-sewing into this aspect of the work, uh, seamlessly. Here, though, Jen brings to my attention another gigantic area of art with fabric: fashion. Wow! What a subject. Some consider it art. Some consider it product. It is and has been simultaneously a vehicle for the exploitation, liberation, and commodification of women. (If you think about it, every inch of women's bodies has been packaged, commodified, and aggressively marketed.) Clothing is Ground Zero - eclipsed only by the body itself and recognized as such by many other mail artists - for exploring gender. This territory is complex and beset by seeming contradictions, if your aim is to make some kind of rational sense of it. I applaud Jen for exploring this and, here, am just sitting back an enjoying the cascade of images.
Jen clearly states the intention of her work. Artist statements of intention are a tradition. For IUOMA friends I've been talking with, I make the point that once your work goes out into the world, the less your intentions matter because people begin applying their own interpretations. (IUOMA provides an alternative of circles of friends who provide feedback and ideas.) When you (Lord forbid) start to enter the territory of critics and academics, your intention matters little. They will tell you what you are trying to say. There was even a critical term invented long ago called "intentional fallacy," which basically means whatever the artist thought they were saying is an error. Karen Champlin just posted some mail art at IUOMA from Cheryl Penn that is about Jackson Pollock. If you ever go back and look at what the art critics and theorists wrote about Pollock when he was emerging, I think you'll be absolutely stunned. It might be one reason why so many artists post-Pollock simply have chosen to say little or nothing about their work in public. And a HUGE problem is that the world of critics and academics is linked to the art market. Scholarship about artists, catalog copy, etc. etc. can impact the art market the same way a quarterly report impacts the share value of stock. Just my opinion. It's a jungle, for sure. Mail art is such a fantastic alternative.
Jen, thank you so much for this! As an IUOMA friend, please keep me in the loop as the work unfold
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