About

Jenna Clouse is a sculptor in Providence, Rhode Island where she lives with her husband and three daughters. She holds a BA in Fine Arts (emphasis in sculpture) from Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego, CA.

Statement

I pattern my sculptures from everyday utilitarian devices, using variations of mold-making and casting to deform their recognizable silhouettes into materially-strange objects. I have turned hand tools into perky latex novelties, vacuum hoses into spectral fiberglass knots, and bike handlebars into broken, waxy fossils. My recent work is flush with the jaunty colors and textures that run riot in my kid-filled home, further pushing the coolly utilitarian objects into the domain of the playful, sensorial, and outright weird. They are funny, but uneasily so.

I get a thrill from the deliberate misuse and over-extension of materials and processes. This attitude gives me the conditions to experiment and invent; it also leads to considerable failure and incidental residue, like stray matter, bulging seams, and distressed surfaces, all of which I find immensely charming. I preserve this crustiness in the final work to emphasize the role of process and of my hand in rendering the objects as useless. I then fit the rugged objects into custom displays, which become reliquaries that insist on the value of the held object through the pleasure of a perfect fit. 

With my sights set on process and delight, tension is able to slip in through the side door. My work pokes at the uneasiness we have when something useful cannot (or will not) fulfill its conventional purpose. The utilitarian objects I reference are ones whose functions I depend on and value, but then there I go undermining the very things I love them for! There is blatant failure where perfection is necessary, levity where austerity might be preferred. I am subjecting these everyday tools to the same internal strain I have carried my whole life but that has intensified through motherhood - the tension between what I am expected to do, what I am capable of doing, and what I feel like doing.