Jane Brucker

Jane Brucker (born 1960) is a contemporary artist based in Los Angeles, California and Bonn/Köln, Germany, whose installation and performance art examines memory and mortality. Brucker uses heirloom and found objects, combined with materials such as cast metals, glass, wood and textiles, to commemorate familial histories and meditates on intimate moments in time.

Jane Brucker
LOST table Installation by Jane Brucker.jpg LOST table Installation by Jane Brucker.jpg Jane Brucker with her installation "LOST"
Born	San Diego, California, United States
🏳️ Nationality	American
🏫 Education	Claremont School of Theology, Claremont Graduate University, San Diego State University
💼 Occupation
Known for	Sculpture, performance art, installation art, contemplative practice

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Life and Work

In addition to her studio practice, Brucker is a professor and Drawing Area Head in the Department of Art and Art History at Loyola Marymount University. She teaches foundation and experimental approaches to drawing and addresses artmaking as a meditative and contemplative practice.

Brucker’s educational degrees include an MFA from The Claremont Graduate University and an MA in Religion and the Arts from the Claremont School of Theology. She attended the Skowhegan School of Sculpture and Painting, where she was awarded a scholarship to study painting with Agnes Martin and traditional buon’ fresco with Lucienne Bloch.

Brucker is married to scientist and medical historian, Jeremy Wasser, Ph.D. Together they are the co-founders of galerie PLUTO, a platform that creates a global dialogue at the intersection of art and science.

Studio practice

In her work, Brucker uses inherited and found objects to represent historical narratives as well as personal stories. Combining these narratives with a variety of technical approaches to materials—from blowing, slumping and stained glass to bricolage, metal casting, woodworking and textiles. LA Weekly critic, Shana Nys Dambrot wrote, “Jane Brucker is an artist whose work combines an avid interest in profound, often arcane points of history with an affection for imbuing ordinary objects with stories and emotional resonance.”

Brucker has been invited to numerous artist residencies. For example, in 2006, she was selected as a fall/winter season artist-in-residence at Künstlerhaus Schloss Plüschow, Germany. Here, her time spent in the countryside helped to develop the beginnings of the project “Unravel.”  In 2014, she spent time alone at the Scottish Sculpture Workshop Winter Residency in Darkness and Isolation and further developed the project. Brucker's time spent in solitude serves to deepen her interest in a combination of contemplation, attention and narrative as a hallmark of in studio practice.

Brucker’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally since the late 1980s (throughout the United States and abroad in Nepal, Germany, Scotland, France, Japan, and the Czech Republic).

Unravel

Brucker is known for her contemporary installation and performance art project “Unravel.” She incorporates her process of reworking and reconstructing the textiles into solo and group participatory performances. As a certified teacher of the Alexander Technique (AT), Brucker applies its principles to performances where gentle touch guides the participant. In the “Unravel” performances, Brucker uses AT to encourage the participant to recognize physical tension patterns resulting from thought and habit. Through undoing, the participants generate feelings of ease and peace. Solo, duet, group and immersive community performances with dancers, musicians, scientists, students, women’s groups, textile organization members and viewers/participants are part of the ongoing “Unravel” project.

The project began in 2006 when Mecklenburgisches Künstlerhaus Schloss Plüschow awarded five grants to a group of international artists, for the duration of three months from October to December. While at the residency, Brucker became interested in learning to knit. The director of the residency introduced Brucker to a woman who was recently widowed and living alone in the nearby forest. The woman, who only spoke German and Russian, visited Brucker daily to teach her to knit. However, Brucker’s predominant left-handedness meant Brucker spent more time taking her garment apart than knitting it together. The strange isolation of this experience, along with a nonverbal intimacy with her elderly guest contributed to “Unravel”’s origin. Spending time with the widow prompted Brucker to think about the patience and care needed to undo knots, tensions and habits as  things fall apart in our lives. With a language barrier between the two, knitting, and more accurately, the undoing, became a source of relating.

Since its inception, “Unravel” has been performed and exhibited in Germany, France, Idaho, Scotland, Japan, Texas, the Czech Republic, Massachusetts, England, France, and throughout Southern California.

LOST

Brucker’s incremental and monumental project, “LOST” has been exhibited at numerous venues including in her 2018 mid-career survey at the Long Beach Museum of Art, and in 2021-2022 at the San Diego International Airport. The installation, consisting of over 380 tiny lost-wax cast brass and bronze objects in various stages of disrepair, touches upon experiences of loss throughout life. From losing our baby teeth to letting go of relationships, the reference to loss prompts viewers to consider what is left behind. The familiarity of the objects provides viewers with opportunities to reflect upon their own relationship to loss. “LOST” at the San Diego Airport is a site-specific art installation. In this setting, the artwork invites travelers to reflect on the universal experiences of loss within an increasingly nomadic world.

At the Long Beach Museum of Art, the tiny objects that make up “LOST” were spread out over an expansive eight-by-24-foot table top. Amongst the small unique items that Brucker hand-cast for the installation are buttons, a handcrafted millinery flower, puzzle pieces, misplaced keys, coins, and containers of makeup that belonged to Brucker’s grandmother.

In 2008, LAContemporary featured “LOST” as part of a two-person exhibition pairing Brucker with Los Angeles artist Barbara Drucker. The pairing of these artists and their work celebrated and reflected their common use of materials and the integration of everyday objects into the exhibition. Brucker’s “LOST” was installed on an eight-foot square pedestal-supported table, creating “an enchanted meditative state of philosophical duration and physical performativity that needs to be instantly enjoyed and eternally preserved.”

Supported by a Durfee Foundation Grant, “LOST” was exhibited in the Czech Republic. “The Depression-era frugality that her grandparents embodied is an idea that recurs,” journalist Mimi Fronczak wrote in the Prague Post. “Such items were salvaged from an ethos of thrift, of repairing not replacing, that existed before the rise of throwaway society; they were then saved a second time by the artist after her grandparents’ deaths. There are also exceptionally tiny and delicate pieces created from her grandmother’s lace tatting, using the lost-wax process. Brucker lovingly coated each loop of thread with wax, sacrificing the original artifact in the process. Ultimately, these works are about the small losses that are a rehearsal for the final loss that comes with death…to honor the amazing women of the past and thereby create a dialogue across generations.”

Memorial

Similar to “Unravel,” Brucker’s large-scale installation, “Memorial Project” is an ongoing project (since 2001). Each seven-by-nine-inch panel is a meditation on that unique person's life.

“Memorial Project” started when Brucker crafted a small canvas made from her late father’s favorite shirt, creating a private remembrance piece for her mother. When her mother’s friends visited their home, they recognized the panel material as a shirt belonging to Brucker’s father. Each of the women visitors who had lost a partner or family member then gave the artist a similar article of clothing to the artist. Brucker made each of them a small canvas the same size and shape as the one made in memory of her father.

The artist is still receiving articles of clothing to be incorporated as part of “Memorial Project.” Participants are invited to reflect on the idea that their own memorial piece is presented in harmony with the collection of garments. Viewers may relate to the familiarity and nostalgia of the individual fabrics and patterns in each garment. In 2018 there were over 300 panels in the project collection exhibited at Long Beach Museum of Art.

Additional iterations of “Memorial Project” include “Memorial Stories” and “Memorial Duet.” “Memorial Duet” was a performance at Brand Library Galleries in Glendale, California with choreographer and dancer, Scott Heinzerling. A second duet was performed with vocalist and cellist MaryBeth Bolin at Laband Gallery, Loyola Marymount University and at Human Resources in Los Angeles.

“Memorial Stories” is the digital archive in which Brucker collects first person narratives from the friends or family members who have donated garments to Brucker to the project. Brucker was inspired to expand “Memorial Project” into an online archive because of the many occasions when she received notes pinned to the donated garments. The notes prompted Brucker to share the stories she received about each person who had worn one of the “Memorial Project” garments. These personal stories, written by those who donated garments to Brucker, further narrate a layered connection between mortality and legacy.

Fragile Thoughts

“Fragile Thoughts” is a tribute to Elizabeth Milbank Anderson, an early twentieth century supporter of public health, learning, the arts and women's rights. In her installation of seven sculptural chairs, Brucker uses multiple glass elements incorporating various techniques in glass—from traditional painted or leaded glass, to fused glass. These elements are embedded into a group of collected antique chairs. Each chair focuses on a different component of Anderson’s legacy in public health, including her contributions to the 1904 Milbank Memorial Bath (also known as the ‘People’s Bath”) and her support of lifesaving Tuberculosis and Diphtheria research. Anderson was particularly interested in the link between illness and poverty and her dedication to prevention and policy making continues to this day in the Milbank Memorial Fund.

The glass elements created for “Fragile Thoughts” are the result of an invitation from historic Judson Studios of Pasadena, the oldest family-run stained glass studio in America. In addition to the collaboration with Judson, Brucker was also supported by a grant from Pasadena Art Alliance for “Fragile Thoughts.”

“Fragile Thoughts” has been exhibited at various Los Angeles venues including the Long Beach Museum of Art, Forest Lawn Museum and the Sam and Alfreda Maloof Foundation. The work has been featured in a number of press outlets such as the New York Times, Smithsonian Magazine and Los Angeles Magazine.

Additional work in which Brucker used glass includes the slumped glass installation, “Chalice,” the suspended wood configurations with blown glass of “Torch,” the site-specific ongoing work, “Bouquet” and “Piano Bench,” a commission from Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate.

Spiritual Furniture

Many of Brucker’s works tap universal narratives through personal family stories. In “Ironing Things Out." Brucker suspends bronze casts of her father’s teeth over and onto her great-grandmother’s wooden ironing board. The work alludes to a moment when Brucker’s father, Eugene Brucker, discussed with her what tasks he needed to accomplish before his death. Brucker’s memory of this discussion with her father on his deathbed is heightened by the simultaneously occurring right-aligned political protests outside the family home. The protesters were responding to her father’s role in voting for a school funding measure as an elected member of a large Southern California county school board.

Tools and Objects

Since the 1990s, Brucker has created small scale sculptures representing metaphorical tasks. Collectively titled “Tools,” these conceptual pieces are often made from perceptual devices such as glasses or binocular parts as a way to gain metaphorical “insight'' while other pieces suggest tools. Many of these works utilize actual tool handles or mechanical parts that Brucker inherited from her grandfather’s toolbox. Similarly, works that Brucker categorizes as “Objects,” ask the viewer to reflect on the physical traits, skills, and aptitudes passed to us through generations. The scraps of fabric and cosmetics used to construct these pieces were collected from Brucker’s mother and grandmother.

External links

• Official Website
• Jane Brucker Faculty Profile (Loyola Marymount University)
• galerie PLUTO
• Jane Brucker CV
• “Make Yourself At Home” exhibition
• Jeremy Wasser

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