麻豆传媒

麻豆传媒 Arts Alumna Jessica Forrestal is back in Greeley and making her mark on the brand-new Campus Commons. Forrestal was invited to be the inaugural Artist-In-Residence at the Campus Commons Gallery and she鈥檚 been working in the state-of-the-art facility since mid-December to bring you 鈥淐onstructs and Confines.鈥� 

鈥淚t鈥檚 awesome to be back. The support is just amazing, and I know that a lot of my professors have always been cheering me on and have stayed in touch and that鈥檚 really great,鈥� Forrestal says. 

Known for her hand-drawn black-and-white large-scale drawings, Forrestal has transformed the Campus Commons Gallery into a playful, industrial space that challenges the concepts of quality, disposability and time. 

鈥淚 think about aesthetics and how we鈥檙e drawn into spaces and how we鈥檙e drawn to consuming things and what convinces our eye that we need to have it,鈥� Forrestal says. 鈥淪o there鈥檚 this design element in all of this stuff we acquire and we somehow think it鈥檚 somehow going to change our world. The stuff itself is incredibly permanent, but in our lives, it鈥檚 considered very temporary and, in many ways, discardable. When you鈥檙e done with it you just throw it away or give it to a thrift store and someone else has it." 

Much of Forrestal's work explores this idea of American consumer culture, mass production, consumption, and disposal of objects that are meant to improve functionality. She often draws inspiration from Ikea manuals and assemblage.

鈥淲e鈥檙e all going to Ikea. We鈥檝e essentially cut out the labor and we鈥檙e doing it ourselves, so all they have to do is manufacture the parts and we pick it up and put it together. There鈥檚 a lot of stuff there with the economics and politics of consumerism that I鈥檓 thinking about as I鈥檓 creating, but then there鈥檚 also this humorous side of it,鈥� Forrestal says. 鈥淚 like bringing the pieces alive and making them seem like they have a life, so that maybe we consider those pieces in a different way. You know the next time you go to make a consumer choice, thinking about the life and the politics of that object.鈥�

Forrestal has worked to create a fully immersive space in the commons, extending her larger than life drawings onto the floor and out of the room.

鈥淭hese objects kind of envelope you and invite you in to their new world,鈥� Forrestal says. 鈥淐onsidering art in a different way, considering objects in a different way. That鈥檚 really ultimately why I do what I do. Why I don鈥檛 make paintings. Why I do large drawings of objects. I want people to think about it differently.鈥� 

Forrestal says 麻豆传媒 played an important role in shaping who she is as an artist today and she鈥檚 

鈥淚 wouldn鈥檛 be where I am without all the work that I did as a student here,鈥� Forrestal says. 鈥淚 used all that work to apply for MFA鈥檚 and that鈥檚 what got me to Brooklyn. My professors were just so helpful and so great and so supportive, and I really needed that at that time.鈥�

You can learn more about how Forrestal鈥檚 experience at 麻豆传媒 impacted the trajectory of her work at an artist talk scheduled for Thursday, February 21 from 5:00 to 6:00 p.m. in the Campus Commons Gallery.

 鈥淐onstructs and Confines鈥� will be on view in the Campus Commons Gallery until March 30, 2019.