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Gillespie Pryor, Jane

English

Keck Graduate Institute

Claremont Colleges
Scholarship @ Claremont
CGU MFA Theses CGU Student Scholarship
4-1-2011
Jane Gillespie Pryor MFA Thesis Statement
Jane Gillespie Pryor
Claremont Graduate University
This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the CGU Student Scholarship at Scholarship @ Claremont. It has been accepted for inclusion
in CGU MFA Theses by an authorized administrator of Scholarship @ Claremont. For more information, please contact
scholarship@cuc.claremont.edu.
Recommended Citation
Gillespie Pryor, Jane, "Jane Gillespie Pryor MFA Thesis Statement" (2011). CGU MFA Theses. Paper 18.
http://scholarship.claremont.edu/cgu_mfatheses/18
Jane Gillespie Pryor 
MFA Thesis Exhibition 
 
Claremont Graduate University 
Artist Statement 
 
 
 
 
My work highlights the ways we arrange ourselves in relationship to other human 
beings. People care for one another by means of touch, the proximity of bodies revealing 
the nature of our relationships. The forms within my sculptures and photographs rely on 
each other, necessitating one another’s existence to hold together physically. The 
components of my works are dependant, unable to support themselves on their own. This 
vulnerability is important to me.  It creates a possibility for exchange and a complexity of 
emotions.  
 
My works also embody an ethos of impulsive, over-the-top generosity.  They 
involve dressing up, putting on, acting out.  In this way they are naïve, sincere and brave, 
perhaps even to the point of being idiotic. They function in the manner of flowers and 
handwritten notes, which do not add to the receiver’s wealth or become a possession to 
keep over time.  Flowers are not for the stomach, but for the eyes and nose. They are 
consumed visually. Then they die and are discarded. 
 
Wire and plastic create the armatures and the skins of my works, facilitating 
change between inside and out. Mutable, the wire and plastic are both flexible and 
unstable.  Similar to the human body, they maintain a delicacy and strength. I think of 
hair—fairly useless adornment that holds our complete DNA. I also think of skin, rough 
and elastic, keeping all our parts together and yet penetrable, easily bruised, and 
weathered.  
 
When our bodies are damaged they are repaired by means of casts and bandages. 
Legs, torsos, necks, are wrapped in sterile fabrics; steel plates are sometimes inserted and 
screws drilled in.  In the case of the dead, we bury, burn, wash, wrap, dress, and anoint—
approaching death with brevity and embarrassment, longing and repulsion. These 
physical actions and the accompanying emotions form the logic that underlies the ways I 
manipulate materials, overlaying, draping, injecting, bending, twisting, and so on. 
 
My work is persistent and impermanent.  It balances somewhere between the 
playfulness of bubble-gum elasticity and the grotesqueness of disemboweled intestines. 
The forms are risky, trying to achieve something, attempting to be realized, or make 
themselves known. They hang down from the ceiling, appearing as bodies ungrounded, 
without a center, precariously caught in odd predicaments. Barely holding it together, the 
works are at once pathetic and endearing, absurd and sad, alive and dead. 
 
 


Jane Gillespie Pryor MFA Thesis Statement

Scholarship@Claremont

Claremont CollegesScholarship @ ClaremontCGU MFA Theses CGU Student Scholarship4-1-2011Jane Gillespie Pryor MFA Thesis StatementJane Gillespie PryorClaremont Graduate UniversityThis Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the CGU Student Scholarship at Scholarship @ Claremont. It has been accepted for inclusionin CGU MFA Theses by an authorized administrator of Scholarship @ Claremont. For more information, please contactscholarship@cuc.claremont.edu.Recommended CitationGillespie Pryor, Jane, "Jane Gillespie Pryor MFA Thesis Statement" (2011). CGU MFA Theses. Paper 18.http://scholarship.claremont.edu/cgu_mfatheses/18Jane Gillespie Pryor MFA Thesis Exhibition  Claremont Graduate University Artist Statement     My work highlights the ways we arrange ourselves in relationship to other human beings. People care for one another by means of touch, the proximity of bodies revealing the nature of our relationships. The forms within my sculptures and photographs rely on each other, necessitating one another’s existence to hold together physically. The components of my works are dependant, unable to support themselves on their own. This vulnerability is important to me.  It creates a possibility for exchange and a complexity of emotions.   My works also embody an ethos of impulsive, over-the-top generosity.  They involve dressing up, putting on, acting out.  In this way they are naïve, sincere and brave, perhaps even to the point of being idiotic. They function in the manner of flowers and handwritten notes, which do not add to the receiver’s wealth or become a possession to keep over time.  Flowers are not for the stomach, but for the eyes and nose. They are consumed visually. Then they die and are discarded.  Wire and plastic create the armatures and the skins of my works, facilitating change between inside and out. Mutable, the wire and plastic are both flexible and unstable.  Similar to the human body, they maintain a delicacy and strength. I think of hair—fairly useless adornment that holds our complete DNA. I also think of skin, rough and elastic, keeping all our parts together and yet penetrable, easily bruised, and weathered.   When our bodies are damaged they are repaired by means of casts and bandages. Legs, torsos, necks, are wrapped in sterile fabrics; steel plates are sometimes inserted and screws drilled in.  In the case of the dead, we bury, burn, wash, wrap, dress, and anoint—approaching death with brevity and embarrassment, longing and repulsion. These physical actions and the accompanying emotions form the logic that underlies the ways I manipulate materials, overlaying, draping, injecting, bending, twisting, and so on.  My work is persistent and impermanent.  It balances somewhere between the playfulness of bubble-gum elasticity and the grotesqueness of disemboweled intestines. The forms are risky, trying to achieve something, attempting to be realized, or make themselves known. They hang down from the ceiling, appearing as bodies ungrounded, without a center, precariously caught in odd predicaments. Barely holding it together, the works are at once pathetic and endearing, absurd and sad, alive and dead.   

https://scholarship.claremont.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1019&amp;context=cgu_mfatheses

Jane Gillespie Pryor MFA Thesis Statement

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