This week we welcome Jane Sangerman, a Brooklyn-based visual artist. Sangerman earned a BFA from the University of New Mexico and MFA from The University at Buffalo. She has had one and two-person shows in New York and Chicago, most recently at Corners Gallery and Anderson Gallery at the University at Buffalo, both in New York State. Her most recent group exhibitions include Bla-Bla Projektraum in Berlin; Art Miami in Florida; the Spartanburg Art Museum in South Carolina; ODETTA Gallery in New York; and the University of Mary Washington Galleries in Virginia.
Sangerman teaches art at Ramapo College of New Jersey. She has lectured and been a visiting artist at The Glasgow School of Art, The University of Delaware, The University at Buffalo’s Anderson Gallery, and Northern Arizona University. Her work is part of more than 25 public collections including those of the Brooklyn Museum, the New York City Public Library, the Spartanburg Art Museum, the University at Buffalo’s Anderson Gallery, and the Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop.
“I lean on a visual format to serve as the arena in which my ideas take place: presenting two opposing spaces, hinged vertically. The upper portion typically explores the metaphysical while the lower plane considers the man-made world crumbling before us. In the latter, I particularly look at aging, peeling surfaces and the human-imbued energy that exists within,” she writes.
“Locality has informed my work throughout my career, and it continues to play a paramount role. The current neighborhood of Bushwick, Brooklyn, where I live and work, can account for pulsating moments of seething color, taken from graffiti-laden surfaces. Fencing occupies a predominant portion of the urban landscape and viewing light and color through them has become an obsession – porous barriers are a theme throughout my work.Physical process is important to my practice. Precise and deliberate hard-edged forms are “drawn” with tape; loose, intuitive sessions with acrylic spray-paint create soft and dynamic assimilations; linoleum prints are stamped – sometimes regularly, other times fleetingly. All these elements are layered one upon another, at times atop an archival ink-jet print, to create a sense of depth (or lack thereof).”
