Jessica Burko
We are very happy to feature the works of Jessica Burko. Jessica is a mixed media and photographic artist and arts administrator. Her works have been exhibited in museums and galleries including the Attleboro Arts Museum, the Danforth Museum, Samson Projects Gallery, and the Rochester Museum of Art (NH). Additionally Jessica is an independent curator and consultant and is currently the programs manager and curator with the Photographic Resource Center at Lesley University in Cambridge MA.
I recently met Jessica while working as a volunteer with the New England Portfolio reveiws sponsored by the PRC and the Griffin Museum of Photography and was affected straight away by her energy, friendliness and devotion to the creative porcess. We are sharing selections from two projects from Jessica. Quiet Loud and Found Gone. These works blend photography, encaustic process and found objects into quiet yet at times noisy awkward and beautiful works. Bits and pieces of self portraits placed into found wooden dresser drawers allowing us to get a sense of fragments of an identity. An identity hidden yet still accessible within the structures. Images of a self insulated yet accessible. Partial self portraits fused with images from nature or children’s toys give us a somewhat disquieting yet muted perspective on the self. These images and layered installations provide a thoughtful narrative around a particularly sequestered identity.
-Steven Duede, Fine Art Photography/Mixed Media, Aspect Gallery Principal.
Presenting self-portraits beneath encaustic medium is my way of quieting the penetrating sounds of life while also surrendering to its insistence. The many-step process of creating the works and each installation is imbued with both meditative and monotonous motion driven by the need stabilize reconcile real and imagined past with concrete present.
Quiet Loud/Found Gone
My work combines photography and encaustic medium with collected found substrates. The imagery consists of fragmented self-portraits and common objects such as keys and toys. Presenting self-portraits beneath encaustic medium is my way of quieting the penetrating sounds of life while also surrendering to its insistence. The many-step process of creating the works and each installation is imbued with both meditative and monotonous motion driven by the need stabilize reconcile real and imagined past with concrete present.
Sidewalks are a treasure trove of objects waiting to be reclaimed and transformed with meaning and vision. The influence of found materials in my work goes beyond their structural integrity as I contemplate their path and life they led before being tossed aside. Wooden panels call for an elevation of their stature as carpenter and construction cut-offs, and dresser drawers, which were once private, intimate spaces, yearn to share their personal stories.
Using empty drawers stacked, bundled, isolated or grouped, holding imagery and being admired for their unique personalities build feelings of finding, hiding, forgetting, remembering, and abandoning. Their defined walls compartmentalize identity. Within them live what we seek and what we fear. As objects of evacuation, forced or chosen, they represent a life disappeared. They embody migration, escape, united with emergence and becoming free.
Jessica Burko
Jessica Burko has been an exhibiting artist since 1985 and has shown in solo and group shows throughout the United States. Burko is originally from Philadelphia and currently lives in Boston. She holds a BFA in Fine Art Photography from Rhode Island School of Design, and an MFA in Imaging Arts and Science from Rochester Institute of Technology.
In addition to being a practicing artist, Burko is the Program Manager and Curator at the Photographic Resource Center, Cambridge, MA. She is also an independent curator with more than thirty exhibitions produced since 2000. Burko's work in the arts community allows her to support artists in achieving their creative and professional goals through lectures, workshops, and partnerships with organizations such as Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI, ArtsWorcester, Worcester, MA, and Mass MoCA’s Assets for Artists Program, North Adams, MA.
Jessica Burko's studio is in the Wareham Studio Building in Boston's South End where she has been producing her photography-based mixed media work since 2006.
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