Exhibiting artist shares the backstory of her solo-exhibition Sort It Out, on view at the JAC through December 3.
“JAC Talk” is a regular program hosted by the Jamestown Arts Center to bring together artists, intellectuals, and creative minds to share their stories with the Jamestown community and beyond.
“Since returning to my hometown of Narragansett in 2017 after 32 years in Chicago, I have heard the same refrain from many fellow prodigal Rhode Islanders:
I couldn’t wait to leave…and then I couldn’t wait to come back.
Sort It Out is rooted in this impulse to return, re-frame childhood experiences with an adult’s perspective, and process unresolved grief. It also contains works of social commentary that call out hypocrisy in a society I expect more of. When I left RI, I believed that my sensitivity was an Achilles heel; today in the studio, it’s my superpower.”
Tracy Weisman, September 2022
BIOGRAPHY:
Tracy Weisman is a Rhode Island-based inter-disciplinary artist. A lifelong maker and lover of pattern and geometry, she began her artistic career after taking a quilting class as a young mother. Her quilted pieces were juried twice into the biennial “Sacred Threads” exhibition, appear in the historic AIDS Memorial Quilt, have been published in The New Work of Our Hands and are in numerous private collections.
Today, her practice covers a broad range of media and often involves collecting and sorting found objects and re-purposing their energy in service of her ideas. Finished pieces may be garments, sculpture, textiles or mixed-media and acrylic on board. Her work has appeared nationally in group shows and addresses themes of memory, grief, body image, the American presidency, gun violence, and the clerical sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church.
Website: tracyweisman.com
Instagram: @tracyweisman
ARTISTS STATEMENT Sort it Out
I’ve always had a compulsion to sort things out. In a childhood that felt emotionally unsteady, sorting and organizing helped me make sense of the world around me and within me. Whether filling teenage journal pages with tiny, urgent script or rearranging my bedroom furniture, these physical acts were soothing and helped me find logic in things I struggled to understand. As I witness humankind becoming more divided and intolerant, this compulsion remains strong.
My practice often involves collecting, sorting and manipulating materials to discover patterns and meaning, and rearranging them into works of social commentary and autobiographical themes. By harnessing the non-verbal communication power of quotidian objects, I aim to create metaphorically and emotionally dense visual stories that reflect our shared humanity and stop viewers in their tracks.
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