Exhibitions
JENNIFER PEPPER: STIGMERGY
The Browsing Room Gallery (Downtown Presbyterian Church) / 154 5th Ave. N. February 3, 2018 - March 23, 2018
Jennifer Pepper
Artist’s Statement:
Stigmergy is a scientific word to describe swarming behavior. It comes from the Greek words for stigma -"mark, sign" and for mergy -"work, action”. In particular to honey bees, stigmergy relates the concept that each individual bee’s actions leave signs in the environment, signs that it and other bees sense and that determine and incite their subsequent actions. For this exhibit, Pepper combines handwriting, imagery, and recycled bee keeping equipment to create mixed media works. This new work plays with notions of habits and patterns that she experienced as a beekeeper. But this work also expresses her interest in the geometric forms (like the bee cell, the honey comb frame, etc.), that when repeated, written, drawn, or sculpted in increments lend themselves to subtle changes that become compelling as form. Her work evokes the natural stigmergy of the swarm in an accessible exhibition.
About the artist:
Jennifer Pepper received her MFA in studio art from the University of North Texas and BFA in Painting and Drawing from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Originally from Louisville, Kentucky, she calls Franklin, Tennessee home after thirteen years in Dallas, Texas spent exhibiting, working in art restoration and museum education. While much of her attention has been devoted to raising two sons since moving to Tennessee in 2005, her experiences on a wooded and wild property outside of Nashville has inspired her to meld the technological with the botanical. Her work (which includes painting, drawing, sculpture, installation, sound, and video) draws from elements of landscape that she comes in contact with daily ~ such as the rapid growth of invasive plants, loss of honeybees, and the weather. She is a member of Coop Gallery and teaches studio art and art history at Lipscomb University.
Image:
Wild Empties, 2017, Wood hive frames, beeswax, plastic, pigment, 81 x 29 x 6 inches
