Jamey Hart

Lives and works in Des Moines, IA, USA

Artist statement

There is a rock on the exterior ledge of my window. The rock is not simply a pile of material reducible to its smallest parts. It remains this rock as it trades atoms with its surroundings and undergoes changes in appearance. The rock also cannot be defined exclusively by its function. It is this rock whether I choose to look at it or cast it into a river. An object is a presence predominantly filled with something absent. An essential keystone always fails to appear. There is something hidden or withdrawn from us. What refuses to surface might be considered an object’s inwardness. Legibility is the degree of ease with which experiences, signs, and symbols convey meaning based on their appearance. The capacity for something to communicate hinges on its visibility, though a visible object is not necessarily a legible one. I give extended attention to materials and situations that are concealed by their commonness and acute specificity. Plastic bags against the curb are like this, or when the wind blows and one leaf on a branch flickers faster than the others. The particular and the minor become uncanny when we look closely at them. They occupy a specific field of experience: one that is barely there, fragile, and unable to be translated beyond the human scale of close, fixed vision. In both looking and making, I am searching for ways to disclose and describe this ambiguous space. My days are centered upon a process of observation, description, collection, and contraction. I...

Artwork

• “Word Packets (Street Names)” , 2024. An ongoing project of collecting and organizing words on a page: I wrote the street names I could remember on thirteen pages of white paper, empty spaces, ink, graphite, permanent marker, marblehead, salem, beverly, blue-spiral coil binding, no cover.
• "Response", 2025. Granite dust, gouache, house paint, sign paint, metal, paper, cardboard, wood, tin, that up on the roof, twice, six scrolls, nails, morning, other things.
• "Unconditional", 2025. Marine paint, gouache, oil enamel, glues, bucket shavings, letter forms, plastic, stick in four parts, tape, mint, marking flag, metal, wire, orange peel, nail, other things.
• "Set", 2024. Plexiglass, asphalt, gum wrapper, waterbottles, aggregates, epoxy, wire, clear gesso, ca glue, sheet metal, liquid nails, wood, gouache, primer, basalt, paper, polyform, other things.
• "Mourning", 2024. Aluminum, flashe, gouache, house paint, nails, pressboard, liquid nails, the window, tape, weld, other things.
• "Union", 2023. Four hornets that died in the studio, four colors from out the window at night, superglue, polymer, lacquer, nails, wood, flashe, gouache, other things.
• "Day" , 2023. Marble, quarry chalk, unfixed watercolor, the white plastic bag, metal bracket, dirt, epoxy, graphite, other things.
• "Afterimage", 2023. Flashe, gouache, acrylic, grout, colored pencil, duct tape, plywood, fishing poles, other things.
• "Way", 2023. Grout, duct tape map, nails, glue, wood, the stones along the route, placed accordingly, other things.
• "Parallel", 2023. Dust from two studios separated in time, tape, gouache, flashe, non-glare acrylic, painted nails, liquid nails, metal, paper, other things.
• "Game", 2023. Sheet metal, wood, twig, wire, epoxy, gouache, flashe, screws, plumbers tape, other things.
• "Sign", 2022. Gouache, flashe, plexi-glass, matboard, glues, duct tape, epoxy, metal, other things.
• "01081321", 2021. Single-channel video, riding a bike, leaving the studio, against the bayou, a narration and list of questions, for the love of an object.
• "02051322", 2022. Single-channel video, text, heron, running water, poem for the moon, mint, double-echo, the questions.
• "Hedge", 2022. Gouache, flashe, mulch, stones, wire, glues, plastics, paper, metal, wood, plexi-glass, other things.
• "Hill", 2021. Liquid rubber, wood, glue, 488 paintings on paper, nails, flashe, metal, pencil, marble egg, and other things.
• "Arithmetic", 2022. Carved stone, steel, epoxy, clear gesso, oil paint, dust, self-etching primer, other things.
• "Closet Colors", 2022. Thirty- four paintings on paper, each representing the color of the sky, the sea, or an object on the path while biking mixed from memory, gouache, glassine, white-out, coil-binding, single-book.
• "Intimate Driving Force", 2021. A book of rivers, slime-trails, and wormholes. Collected writings over six years. Something about time. A conversation with Robert Walser, and a conversation with incomprehension.
• "For", 2021. Mud puddle and leaves from my street, matching volume plexiglass box, epoxy, silicone, glue, wood, screws, other things.