About
Jenna Clouse is a sculptor in Providence, Rhode Island where she lives with her husband and three daughters. She completed her BA in Fine Arts (Sculpture concentration) from Point Loma Nazarene University in 2009, after which she showed regularly in the San Diego art community. In 2012 she moved to Providence and began a 13 year career as a research interviewer specializing in toy design. She is expected to receive her MFA in Sculpture from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2027.
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. Under my watch toilets have morphed into ecological towers, vacuum hoses into spectral fiberglass knots, and bike handlebars into broken, waxy fossils. My recent work is flush with the gunk that runs riot in my kid-filled home, further pushing the coolly utilitarian objects into the domain of the playful, sensorial, and outright weird. They are occasionally 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 unruly residue, like stray matter, bulging seams, and buckling forms. Refusing to eliminate flaws is intentional - it emphasizes the role of my hand in distancing the objects from the perfection of their industrially-produced origins. Custom mounts, protectively padded with soft materials (albeit dirt), obey the irregular edges of the forms and in doing so 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 is expected. 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 desire.