New Growth: The Art of Jennyfer Stratman

Christmas 2004 and I find myself transplanted from my home in Melbourne, Australia, to the chilly high desert of Albuquerque, New Mexico, for the holidays. Here I find myself, by way of distraction, contemplating the work of American artist Jennyfer Stratman. In a strange way, my own temporary relocation brings with it a greater understanding of Stratman's work.

Phoenix-born and Melbourne-based Stratman is a young artist whose life and work have adapted through migration. Her recent work, shown here, follows from earlier interests in botanical and biological forms. Initially using cast body parts and plant forms to translate personal comments about her environment, sexuality, and community, Stratman has developed a visual language that intimately communicates a unique perspective on common human experiences.

In recent years, Stratman has brought into her work references to the migrant experience. After moving to Australia in 2001, she established studios in Melbourne and Phoenix, Arizona. The effort of transplanting and maintaining her artistic practice in both countries has been a struggle uniquely depicted in her work. Stratman's struggle in assimilating into her new environment resonates with American and Australian audiences because citizens of both countries are keenly aware of their own migrant histories. And, like a migrating bird, Stratman makes regular journeys from one country to the other, collecting influences and experiences along the way.

Stratman has cited the intensely personal expressions of artists such as Louise Bourgeois, Ana Mendieta, and Frida Kahlo as influential in her own development. Certainly, she pours her own potent emotions into depictions of people lost, unable to communicate, or struggling to liberate themselves from earthly burdens. Stratman's main communicative method is empathy. Her figures are dynamically placed in their surroundings, attempting unification where they are blocked, striving for movement or extension where they are grounded. We recognize their need to maneuver within and gain control over their specific environments as a common human response to adversity.

Stratman approaches her work with sparsity of detail; her figures are bare sketches, yet with the subtlest inflections they indicate intense emotions such as love, yearning, loneliness, or kinship. A delicious tension exists between the femininity of her subjects and the masculinity of her techniques. Whether cast or fabricated, patinated metals and scorched wood are the frequently featured materials in Stratman's free-standing and wall-mounted sculptures. She destroys the unblemished surface of her medium and burns into it a new and far more complex imagery.

The Southwest of Stratman's personal history is a consistent presence in her work, although always through subtle and indirect references. In Wandering Star, the flattened mesa-tops of the landscape and the swirling heatwaves of the desert in summer are reminders of her origins. This work's title, however, leads us to understand that the wandering star is moving away from the familiarity of this landscape into another not shown, but implied.

These quietly controversial works serve to remind us that figurative sculpture continues to be vital in contemporary art, despite often being overshadowed by more conceptual and attention-grabbing work. These sculptures ask that viewers work harder to communicate with each other, to express emotions, and to respect our origins and where we've led ourselves.