Jenna Manzano is an artist living and working in Oakland, California. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in literature from University of California Berkeley and a Master of Fine Arts in poetics from Mills College in Oakland, after which 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
I shape monochromatic fiber sculpture reflecting how practice and observation resensitize our capacities for deeper attention and connectedness. Tapestry weaving becomes a sculptural material, transformed into tubes, cords, belts, and other woven forms, most frequently featuring the slubby texture and natural tone of undyed linen. Unruly fibers, variable edges, and twisting seams expose physical imperfections inherent to both hand-making and the raw material. Restriction to a single color accentuates textural inconsistencies that serve as evidence of innumerable and imperfect gestures. (1)
My studio practice originates in the labor-intensive and methodical repetition required for taking shape as an authentic self, compelling questions of existential purpose where the practice is precisely the point. (2) Inefficiency presents an alternative to conventional measures of productivity, while representational refusal in the object induces stillness countering the visual spectacle of contemporary overload. Absurd monotony in the process of hand-making gives way to somatic soothing, when more time with less content invite embodiment and increase capacity for deeper modes of listening. (3)
Spare visuals intimate emotive subtleties best perceived in quiet and stillness. Many works initiate reciprocity by mirroring vaguely human proportions. In bodily identification with the object, we further recalibrate attention and expand our capacity for interconnectedness in ordinary surroundings and everyday interactions.
Eva Hesse’s objects, Robert Morris’s felt pieces, and Richard Serra’s early work in rubber are formal and material influences. I also turn to Franz Erhard Walther’s focus on the time and physicality of human interaction and empathy in First Work Set.
Hesse, in her 1968 statement, writes “I want the work to be non-work…as a thing, an object, it accedes to its non-logical self. It is something, it is nothing.”
My conceptual framework draws heavily on Deep Listening by Pauline Oliveros and John Cage’s 4’33”, as well as his “Lecture on Nothing” and “Lecture on Something,” wherein he says “It is of the utmost importance not to make a thing but rather to make nothing. And how is this done? Done by making something which then goes in and reminds us of nothing.”