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Currently an adjunct professor at Roger Williams University in Providence, RI, Jane Hesser received her BFA from SUNY Buffalo and her MFA from Rhode Island School of Design. She has been featured in numerous solo and group shows, including the Boston Center for the Arts, the RISD Museum, PhotoLAB(oratory) at Artspace@16, and was recently awarded a residency at the Vermont Studio Center. She will be featured in two upcoming shows at the Montserrat Galleries: A New Order: Appropriation Art in the Digital Age, curated by MCAG Assistant Director Leonie Bradbury (December 3-February 5), and Diagnostic Arts, curated by MCAG Director, Katherine French (February 11-April 9).
Science and medicine fascinate Hesser. Focusing primarily on the emotional and aesthetic relations between the mind and the body, she has worked extensively in a unique resource collection of scientific artifacts located at RISD, the Edna Lawrence Nature Laboratory. Featured online will be selections from 3 series that deal with ideas of matrices and networks—in both the human body and the natural world—including a project using re-photographed neuron images of "tangles" from microscopic samples, still-life studies of various roots, and blown-up images of hair.
- Leslie K. Brown, PRC Curator
Click here for Hesser's web site
Click here for Montserrat Gallery’s web site
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PAST PRESENTATIONS
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about the Northeast Exposure.
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Tangles and Snarls
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In my work, I explore and revel in the mystery, vulnerability, intangible nature and grace of the mind. In Tangles and Snarls, I image systems and networks in the natural world that I see as metaphors for the intricate matrices that exist within us and may compose our minds.
Microscopic, fragile networks of neurons seem to be responsible for many human abilities such as our capacity to feel emotion, understand language, form beliefs and construct our own identities. When these systems are functioning, they are the source of all our strengths, and the things we tend to believe make us unique as humans.
However, even a slight malfunction, a knot, a tear, or an infection, can trigger chaos. Alzheimer's disease, for example, results when neurons begin to stick together and form plaques. In this body of work, I point to connections in networks across aspects of the natural world and find beauty in the vulnerability that results from our utter dependence on these fragile systems. I see grace in entropy and reflect on the enormous meaning in tiny networks, tangles and snarls.
- Jane Hesser
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