pods of color.

The work of Jen Prather is fun, fabulous, and uber colorful. Her work, Utricularla Vulgaris, is a great suspended work in connective thread. Jen combines sewing, crochet, and a number of crafty techniques to make large pod like sculptures that are clustered in corners, suspended, and grouped.

from Jen's statement:

My interest lies in creating a hyperreal environment that borrows from 1970s pattern design aesthetics and combines together a patchwork of recycled fabric scraps, various crafty thread and yarn materials, and other miscellaneous industrial cords and wires. In these spaces one can comingle with soft, anthropomorphic forms amidst playfully claustrophobic installations...

I am excited by the eccentric and colorful discarded objects, and in this sense, wish to revive their life by putting them to use. This guides my practice towards focusing on ideas of birth and life cycles, both in terms of concept and materiality. These ideas take shape through referencing botanical niches and biological ecosystems that are intricately woven together through their interactions within whimsical utopias. Specifically in these systems, I am intrigued by the relationships between plant-life, animal-life, and human-life–how these are connected and unconnected, manipulated, sustained, and tainted. Such references include a collective of orifices and appendages, pistils and stamens, umbilical cords and funiculi, fetuses and larva.

I really love the playful nature of Jen's work while it also at moments makes one think of grotesque growths, bacteria, and fungi.

All of Jen's work seems to expertly use space, something I think is rare in such a young artist. Her works tend to grow up and down from the main "pod" often skirting onto the floor and visually creating quite an impact.

and her use of color and pattern is flawless!


See more of Jen's work at her website.