Jennifer Schmidt

Jennifer Schmidt is a multi-disciplinary artist living in Brooklyn, NY, who works with print media, graphic design, writing, and sound to create site-specific installations, video, and performances that question the role of visual iconography and repetitive actions within a given environment. She received her Master of Fine Arts degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Bachelor of Arts degrees in Studio Art and Art History from the University of Delaware.

Can you tell us a bit about the process of making your work? 

Jennifer reading and note-taking from the comfort of her car.

Reading, writing, and research are a large part of my practice. Through reading and writing, I make notes on paper and notes on my phone involving snippets of text, quotes, and words that eventually become definitions, concepts, and poetry. My practice is a composition book with pages full of words marked up in Sharpie; sketched outlines of sheets of paper turned vertical and horizontal, folded, rolled; specs for machines; colors; fonts; how to setup; how to clean; instructions for repeating the same action to get the same effect; lists for gathering materials; types of papers. Pre-press. 

I can use tools and presses anywhere to produce my work. However, I’m most interested in the performative act of including the questions and impetus for making something into what it becomes. Thinking about situational response and citing. This could involve a work of literature, a physical location, a time in history, a found object, a skill, or the use of a particular tool or machine. 

Her studio space in Brooklyn, NY.

What are you working on at the moment?

I’m continuing to work on a series of double sided letterpress prints using red, green and blue ink that play with perspective, optics, and patterns. Parallelogram: The Waves is inspired in part by the visual descriptions in Virginia Woolf’s novel The Waves— of the waves, the sea, and the light changing with the shifting of time throughout a day. The prints are printed as loose leaf sheets of text weight paper, and are meant to be an unbound installation of prints that can be experienced spatially. The red, green, and blue layers of imagery are reproduced at 100% scale, then printed as offset color layers to play with the eye, and implicate the viewer in the work. The graphic imagery includes: reconstructed marker drawings, a wallpaper pattern from a photograph from my apartment, red-line line drawings, a palm frond, and other elements that when combined and printed can be read as a series of acts in a play. The prints are to be hung, shuffled, stacked, and set apart, allowing the pages to be viewed as artifacts, décor, book, document, landscape, and manuscript.

I’m also continuing to work on reading, speaking, and recording a performance titled She would practice public speaking in the woods (2019), which includes the poem I can hear fishing in the forest. Reading and speaking aloud is a new way for me to activate the written work, which includes overheard conversations, shared translations, found text, and open narratives. The work is a play poem told in the form of a speaker’s bureau— passing on information through telling and sharing, while leaving space for the reader and hearer to meet in the woods—a space that is at once public and private. This relates to a print publishing project that I’m working on involving an edition of newsprint booklets.

The two prints we chose are part of a performance and installation. Can you tell us about that piece? 

I can hear fishing in the forest, 2019.

I can hear fishing in the forest (2019) is a series of “states” and poetry: mentions, thoughts, sayings, and exchanges collected and printed while I was an artist in residence at the Frans Masereel Centrum in Belgium during the summer of 2019. The work is a social sculpture, and includes installation, performance and writing. The residency is located in a small town called Kasterlee an hour away from Antwerp. Residents sleep in little A-frames with their windows open, next to a forest of trees bordering an adjoining neighborhood, with farms of fields, crops, and horses on the other side. I could see acorns growing from my window. And hear pine cones falling. Waking to the smell of manure that trucks spread at night. I traveled to Belgium with my children, and would walk them through the woods, neighborhoods, and town each day on our way to camp in the forest. The area is known for its sandy earth, and the large roots of trees which you can see above ground. In the morning, the light is soft yellow and falls like highlights on the yellow and green plants and weeds growing along paths and roads. Walking through soft spaces, plants become animated, and the forest becomes a screen—woods, farms, fields, and yards blend. The sand came home in our shoes. 

The plant and weed photographs were taken while walking in soft spaces in Belgium. I, then, screenprinted the images onto cotton t-shirt and bedsheet fabric, worn and washed with our clothes. To be hung, draped, spread and folded. The poetry: phrases, mentions, and exchanges are from conversations and found texts I encountered during this time, interactions with other resident artists and with my children.

Where are some of your favorite spaces that support contemporary art or design? 

MIT Press and MIT List Center in Cambridge, MA are two of my favorite places for engaging with contemporary art and design. Their publications and exhibitions are international, timely, and often introduce me to theoretical ways of thinking about print media, graphics, and language. I’m also a big fan of the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum in New York. They put on excellent shows from their collections, and are able to deftly link the present to ongoing and past histories. Miriam Gallery is a new contemporary art gallery featuring artist books in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Their programming, exhibitions, and experimental approach to working with artists in their space is refreshing. They have an incredible selection of curated artist books on view and for purchase in a thoughtfully designed shop where each book is presented as a thing to be experienced. Yearly, I look forward to the Editions/Artists Books Fair in New York during Print Week. It’s a great place to see contemporary work in print where you can easily speak with publishers and catch up with friends. 

Jennifer reading from the comfort of her car.

Now that the art has an online presence, has that changed? 

I’ve been finding art conversations more accessible during Covid via the internet, Zoom, and social media. In many ways, it’s been easier to attend talks, critiques, and roundtables online, while also following artists, galleries, and organizations on Instagram. Not having to factor in a commute is huge. You can drop in to a talk anywhere in the world, and then meet up with someone afterwards somewhere else. I’ve enjoyed being in critique groups with artists abroad, and hosting artists from across the country in the courses I teach – conflating time and space. You can invite someone to attend a talk or performance on Zoom, and they can attend regardless of where they’re located. I think people feel more seen, and able to share. We seem to be more open to connecting right now in person via Zoom, and opening up conversation in a meaningful way. We’re still text dependent, but Zoom has allowed for a new way of being together that is not fully edited or cached. I really like the informality of how we can access each other from our car, home, studio, or sidewalk, and how this makes it possible for more people to be part of a conversation regardless of physical limitations and funding.

During Covid, I’ve been more focused on connectivity, bearing witness, and community than going to galleries and museums. I’ve been observing the rhythms and patterns of my neighbors on my block, and behavior on the streets and sidewalks. The effect of the pandemic on everyone’s wellbeing, commerce, sanitation, nature, and how people can come together to share resources has been huge. New York slowed down— allowing people to connect in new ways, and to exhibit collective empathy. 

I live near Greenwood Cemetery in Sunset Park. Each day, I walk part of the perimeter and observe how the sidewalks are used alongside the fence. Without a lot of green or open space nearby, the sidewalk along the fence is treated like a park or parking lot where people park their cars and lay out blankets to eat lunch with friends in between shifts; teens sit and play music after school; people nap in cars and sleep in vans. It is a semi private/public site. There is little signage and directive for people to do other than what they wish, and no one around to say otherwise. Because the edge of the cemetery faces a ConEd electric station, and is not on a street with shops and a lot of foot traffic, people feel free from view. In a city full of visual signage and rules for occupancy, this is really interesting. It mimics what’s happening involving restaurants and temporary outdoor dining structures… and the need to reclaim streets to allow for leisure and fresh air.

Do you have any shows coming up? 

I’m currently a visiting artist in residence at Trestle Projects, and will be showing a new body of work in their gallery in November and December. 

I’m also planning a printed poster project that can be shown anywhere—thinking about urban space, adaptive architecture, and so called soft spaces— areas in between, alongside, and on the fringe of “administered” property.

Anything else you would like to share?

Thank you for including me in your show. I’m thrilled to take part and show my work at Project Gallery V! Breaking down the 4th wall.

Jennifer Schmidt’s work will be included in our upcoming show “In the Cool of the Evening,” Oct. 30th – Dec. 30th. Visit her website or Instagram (@jenniferannschmidt) to see more of her work.