Jane Brucker is an artist whose work thematically revolves around memory and loss, bodily fragility and death. She mixes found objects, such as family heirlooms, with cast items, blown glass, and performance, drawing on historic traditions, experimentation in placement, and impeccable finish to create emotional impact.
Read MoreBrucker has a BA in Drawing from San Diego State University in Southern California, where she grew up, graduating in 1982. Brucker earned an MFA in Performance Art and Painting from Claremont Graduate University and in 1987 she studied with Agnes Martin and Lucienne Bloch at the Skowhegan School of Sculpture and Painting in Maine. While there, Brucker researched the connections between art and spirituality. In 1991 she also achieved an MA in Religion and Art from Claremont School of Theology.
Inspired by carefully researched historical narratives, often from her own family, Brucker's practice blends traditional casting skills and experimental presentation procedures. She uses poetic language and craft skills, such as carpentry, wood turning, glass blowing, knitting, printing, and bronze casting with found objects to create complex works of great intimacy that demand close inspection and provoke thought.
Significant Brucker installations include Fragile Thoughts (2018), Bouquet (2018), Notions (2009–2010), Lost (2006–ongoing), and Chalice (2004–2005).
In some works, the repeated ritualistic movements of craft production through performance are extenuated or reversed to comment on bodily and mental vulnerability over the passing of time, as well as the limits of self (or community) belief.
Significant Brucker performances include Polishing the Brick (2015), Travel Diary (2010), and Unravel (2009–ongoing).
Brucker's series of sculptural and metaphorical objects include Torch (2005) and Tools (1997–ongoing). Community narratives include Memorial (2001–ongoing).
She is also an enthusiastic champion of meditation through the Alexander Technique, as a means of opening up new channels of creativity.
Jane Brucker has been the subject of many solo and group exhibitions.
Recent solo exhibitions include Harold and Traugott, with Jörg Obergfell, KUNSTKULTUR, Königsfeld, Germany (2019); No Permanence is Ours, with Park Chel Ho, BAIK ART, Culver City, California (2019); Fragile Thoughts, Judson Studios, South Pasadena, California (2019); Fragile Thoughts, Long Beach Museum of Art, California (2018); Bouquet, SPARC Gallery, South Pasadena, California (2015).
Recent group exhibitions include Judson Studios: Stained Glass from Gothic to Street Art, Forest Lawn Museum, Glendale, California (2021); Make Yourself at Home, San Diego International Airport (2021); FIVE, BAIK ART, Culver City, California (2019); A Seat at the Table, Edward Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate, Boston (2019); The Art of the Self, Golden West College Art Gallery, Huntington Beach, California (2018); Farewell, Eden, Stuart Hagaa Gallery, Descanso Gardens, La Cañada Flintridge, California (2016); Ateliers Ouvert, DRAWInternational, Caylus, France (2015).
Jane Brucker's website can be found here.
John Hurrell | Ocula | 2022
