JENNIFER ZACKIN

Free Energy: Poetics of Resonance and The Vortex Weave

For the past several years Jennifer Zackin has been weaving a vortex on a loom installed in a 10 foot square space using 2,880 ft of rope in her studio. This technique has been developed from years of studying weaving while visiting the Himalayas and living the Andes. The next phase of this work uses the Vortex Weave as a process for bringing people together developing spatial literacy and probes the potential energy generated through art-life processes by weaving in community, sharing skills, and envisioning with others the kind of future we strive to collectively shape. By infusing our actions with purpose, together we can craft a healthier, more sustainable world.

In physics a vortex is the central axis of a spinning torus, a three-dimensional ring or doughnut shaped-object around which energy can flow. Mathematical equations can be used to describe this process. This pattern can be found throughout the universe in hurricanes, galaxies, and atoms. Nikola Tesla’s experiments with energy employed the torus in the development of his famous coil. Thinking this way, Collective Vortex Weaving becomes an inquiry into the potential energy generated when art and life merge.

For more than two decades Jennifer Zackin has been integrating public art, sculpture, installation, performance, collaboration, ceremony, photography, video, collage and drawing into acts of reverence and reciprocity. Whether wrapping trees in patterns of brightly colored rope, growing medicinal herbs in a public garden for public use, offering large masses of rose petals to oceans and lakes, creating absorbent tentacles (“hair booms”) out of salvaged materials to aid in the clean-up efforts of toxic spills, Zackin seeks to engage and create community in her process, bringing art and ritual into everyday life. Every act is an exploration of exchange, communion, performance, skill-sharing and mark-making.

“Jennifer Zackin has worked with Rose Petals, Little Plastic Cowboys, pre-Columbian symbols, bright handmade pom-poms, cheap mass-produced posters, coca leaves, and her grandfathers old Super-8 home movies. How she weaves them into rhythmic, often meditative forms depends in great part on the underlying pattern that she is able to detect and orchestrate among her diverse materials.” – Lori Waxman

Zackin’s work has been exhibited in national and international museums, including the Whitney Museum of American Art NY, Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art CT, Spertus Museum – Chicago IL, Rose Museum MA, the Wexner Center for the Arts OH, Contemporary Art Museum – Houston TX, The Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, Høvikodden – Norway, Institute of Contemporary Art – Boston MA and the Zacheta National Art Gallery – Warsaw, Poland. Commissions include Governors Island NYC with LMCC, Katonah Art Museum NY, Socrates Sculpture Park LIC – Queens NY and the Berkshire Botanical Gardens – Stockbridge, MA. She is the recipient of fellowships and residencies, including Factory Direct at Pinchbeck Rose Farm, Art Omi, Atlantic Center for the Arts and the Skowhegan School for Painting and Sculpture.