Artist's Statement, by Jessi Muhr

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Twelve years I had my first piece accepted for showing at a quasi-local gallery, Studio 29, on the Lower East Side. It’s kind of a funny story, but I don’t feel like telling it right now. Suffice to say, it formed my rather bitter opinion of exhibits, and made me

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As a modern day woman I often feel the need to instill my identity into every piece of art I create, as if it is so fragile and wispy that if I don’t preserve it on canvas it will be whisked away in the next passing breeze.

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On second thought, this may make me sound ignorant and ungrateful to all the suffragettes and feminists who came before me, but being a woman doesn’t much affect my understanding of myself, because it’s not like I have anything to compare it to. Anything I feel or think or make could just as easily be attributed to my being white, or born in the eighties, or from New Jersey. It’s true that most of my work involves some variation on the female figure, and often is impressionistic enough to suggest some kind of identity crisis or reflection, but that’s for art history students or critics to find and exploit, not me, and definitely not in my artist’s statement.

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Shit.

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When I was 15 I entered and won my first art contest, resulting in my painting “Untitled/Mirrors” being featured at Studio 29’s ‘Young Artists’ exhibit, which, logically, was my first step in a ‘career,’ if I may be so bold, as an artist. The painting was, according to someone’s review, an exploration of the concept of infinity mirrors—that is, two mirrors facing one another, thus reflecting back infinitely. Its description is a lot more elegant than the content. Frankly, it looks like a kindergartener painted it. I did it that way on purpose, with some silly sophomoric notion that its crudeness in technique would offset its lofty goal, which for some reason seemed necessary, or maybe just cerebral enough to make me want it to be necessary. Anyway I’ve always tried to paint things that no one can see, even before I had a really cohesive aesthetic. Those were the days when I still liked to paint with the intent of making fun of the artists we studied in class, like cubists. I thought that so much of their work looked like a joke and required so little talent that I could do it too, and I did, filled with the kind of self-righteous irony that made me feel superior. About this painting in particular I also had the idea that since no one can look straight into infinity mirrors without seeing themselves in them, then no one could know what they (infinity mirrors) look like (with no one in them), so any way I painted them I would maintain the illusion of some kind of authority. So, “Untitled/Mirrors” was born out of this adolescent self-important cynicism: ‘I can paint something good and not because I feel moved by the spirit to, but because I’m smart enough to.’

And you can take that to the bank. That’s something I’ve never told anyone that, let alone handed it in for publication. After I painted it, I half-expected my teacher to give me detention for so blatantly making fun of her lecture. Instead she entreated me to send it in to this competition in the city that offered $100, a spot at Studio 29, and a master class with some CUNY professor as a prize.

Like I said, that began my trajectory, by introducing me to the world of galleries and criticism and art degrees. Most importantly, it gave me the confidence to start showing people things that were way more personal to me, work that I spent years on, not just study hall. It felt good, to step out of my shell, to let myself feel something emotional about my art, to replace sarcasm with sincerity. And here I am now, guesting in a coffee table book, apparently successful enough to be considered one of Chicago’s emerging women artists. What have I learned from all this? Maybe that I’ve only won a couple contests since that one, but never for any piece that I cared about.

This is mostly irrelevant and self-indulgent and will probably be edited out anyway. Feel free to make me sound smarter/snappier/funnier/something-ier. I suppose I’m honored that someone values my opinion enough to ask for it in writing, but on the flip side of that coin, I’ve expressed myself as best I can through my painting, so my writing is superfluous. But alas, artist’s statements must be in writing.

I suppose the purpose of an artist’s statement is to give the reader a personal lens through which to view the artist’s work. People like having lenses through which to view things, especially abstract art. I can see why I might be expected to offer the lens of womanhood, given the theme of this book, but the truth is I don’t ever think about that. I do, however, think a lot about the anger and the resentment that fueled the start of my career, about the master class I earned with my vindictiveness, about how the paintings I care most about have never left my studio.

 insert something witty and profound and summational