I shape monochromatic fiber sculpture centering repetitive practice and process to resensitize capacities for deep attention and connectedness. My work retains the physical imperfections inherent to both hand-making and the raw material. Restriction to a single color and material directs full focus to physical details, accentuating textural inconsistencies that serve as evidence of innumerable and imperfect gestures.

My studio practice originates in the labor-intensive and methodical repetition required for a form to take authentic shape. The absurdity of the monotonous but soothing process of hand-making explores how the combination of more time and less predefined content increases capacity for various modes of listening, and thus argues in favor of deep attention to detail as a preferred mode of being.

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Jenna Manzano is an artist living and working in Oakland, California. After growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area, she earned a Bachelor of Arts in literature from University of California Berkeley and a Master of Fine Arts in poetics from Mills College in Oakland. She then spent time volunteering and teaching in the Mills book art studio as well as studying and freelancing in graphic design. Jenna brings this uniquely blended background—the metaphorical, conceptual process of experimental poetics coupled with a distinct attention to the streamlined formal composition of design—to her current studio practice.

jenna@jennamanzano.com