MTV VMA's with Miley Cyrus

Jen Stark has been invited to create original animations and artwork for the stage and promotional material of the 32nd MTV Video Music Awards, hosted by Miley Cyrus, which will air live on August 30, 2015.

As the featured artist, Stark has reimagined the visual identity of the 32nd installment of the awards show with her unique asthetic. In an early teaser video for the show, a colorful wormhole acts as a tunnel for a floating space suit-clad Cyrus, the always entertaining Disney darling turned pop icon who brought twerking and tongue poking into the cultural mainstream. In other promotional materials, Cyrus poses playfully in front of Stark's dripping designs. Going beyond advertisement, Stark's monumental hand-painted billboard in Los Angeles of Cyrus licking a moonman on a meltdown background, act as temporary public artworks, showcasing the brilliant patterns and colors that Stark masterfully choreographs. Beginning this week, these videos will be playing on billboards in Time Square and Port Authority. For the polished precision of her animations for the show, Stark worked with David Lewandowski, director and animation artist known for his bizarrely humorous meme-prone videos.

During the show itself, Stark’s work will be featured in an animated set design displayed on a massive LED screen of the artist’s trippy, drippy scheme which will open for Cyrus’ dramatic entrance: the hostess sliding onstage through a rainbow wormhole. Stark has also customized the MTV logo for the show’s broadcast, envisioning the iconic graphic as a candy-colored meltdown.

Show airs Aug 30th at 9pm EST. 

A hand-painted billboard was created in Los Angeles located at the intersection of Hollywood & Vine.

A hand-painted billboard was created in Los Angeles located at the intersection of Hollywood & Vine.

Dripping Animation to be used during the show.

Miami New Times

Nice writeup in the Miami New Times by Liz Tracy

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FOR THE WHOLE ARTICLE, CLICK ON THE IMAGE

The Surf Lodge

I just finished an artist residency at The Surf Lodge in Montauk, NY.  While there I created a large scale mural on the side of the bldg, as well as a solo show in their gallery space. Check out the videos and photos of the process below.

photo by Studio ZOO NYC


Womanhouse Group show at Eric Firestone Gallery

My latest work will be in a group show at Eric Firestone Gallery this Saturday May 23rd.

Womanhouse | May 23 – June 14, 2015

Opening Reception: May 23rd, 6 – 9 PM

Artist Include: Nina Chanel Abney, Joa Baldinger, Sarah Braman, Julia Chiang, Judy Chicago, Evie Falci, Orly Genger, Maya Hayuk, Misaki Kawai, Maia Ruth Lee, Keiko Narahashi, Amanda Ross-Ho, Miriam Shapiro, Shinique Smith, Agathe Snow, Jen Stark, Jessica Stockholder, Despina Stokou, Vadis Turner, Wendy White, and Chloe Wise.

The original 1972 Womanhouse project was organized by Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro, who founded the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) Feminist Art Program. Womanhouse was conceived by a member of Chicago and Schapiro’s program staff, art historian Paula Harper, who The New York Times celebrated as “the first [of] art historians to bring a feminist perspective to the study of painting and sculpture.” By taking over and remodeling a deserted Hollywood mansion, the artists behind the original Womanhouse aimed to confront social issues through physical labor, while they learned how to renovate their dilapidated home. Chicago and Schapiro encouraged their students to step outside of constructed gender roles and challenge their identities as artists.

The work collected in Womanhouse (2015) is inspired in part by Chicago and Schapiro’s commitment to dignifying material and labor within an art practice. Such as in Sarah Braman’s work, where medium gives rise to form as plexi and steel are combined with mundane objects to make new constructions that feel counterintuitive, yet remain translucent and light. Similarly, Agathe Snow uses industrial materials such as fiberglass, pegboard and steel resulting in refined works that speak of environmental and moral decay, giving new life to the factory-made materials she uses in her assemblages.


Kemper Museum

One of my large paper sculptures is in a group show at the Kemper Museum in Kansas City. Show runs January 30–April 26, 2015

"Meltdown" / 6ft x 8ft / 2012 / acid-free paper, glue, wood

Piece by Piece: Building a Collection premieres a selection of more than 30 objects in a range of media by 26 national and international artists from the Kansas City–based collection of Christy and Bill Gautreaux. The exhibition results from an enriching collaboration with the collectors and reflects extensive curatorial research into their energizing and ever-evolving contemporary art collection for which we are profoundly grateful. It highlights a global perspective, including established and emerging artists from Africa, Afro-Caribbean regions, Europe, India, Latin America, and the United States.

Meditations on process, pattern, and material emerge as a major thread connecting the works, anchoring the artists’ themes of abstraction, the body and gesture, race and politics, as well as landscape and geography. The exhibition presents a distinguished vision in the building and shaping of a unique collection. The Gautreauxes note that “Most of this work was collected one or two pieces at a time, often spontaneously,” acknowledging, “It is exciting to see it curated by the Kemper Museum into a cohesive exhibition.” It is our hope that this focus on artists’ engagement with material and process, elevating themes significant to their practice, will prompt continued dialogue with contemporary art at the Kemper Museum.

Artists include: Sanford Biggers, McArthur Binion, Sarah Braman, Nick Cave, Nathaniel Donnett, Leonardo Drew, Andrew Erdos, Teresita Fernandez, Vibha Galhotra, Theaster Gates, Jeffrey Gibson, Michelle Grabner with Brad Killam, Hayv Kahraman, Glenn Kaino, Bharti Kher, Katrin Korfmann, Aimé Mpane, Vik Muniz, Toyin Odutola, Angel Otero, Mariana Palma, Ebony G. Patterson, Jen Stark, Mickalene Thomas, and Kara Walker.

Channel 10 News

My latest mural in the Miami International Airport, "Meltdown" was featured on Channel 10 News in South Florida. See the video here:


Miami International Airport Mural

I just completed my latest mural, "Meltdown", a permanent installation at Miami International Airport. The mural is located between Terminal D&E on the 3rd level, just off the moving skywalk. Check it out next time you pass through the Miami airport. Photos by Peter Vahan. "Passengers at Miami International Airport can now have a colorful “meltdown” experience when they walk past Meltdown, a new, permanent art mural by Miami artist Jen Stark. Meltdown greets visitors to MIA with a cascade of color and patterns when they enter the airport’s North Terminal on the third floor from the parking garage or the MIA Mover station.

According to Stark, creating Meltdown took a little more than a week with the assistance of several volunteers she enlisted to help her paint the intricate mural.  “I typically had four assistants per night,” said Stark.  “One of the last nights I had 10 people. I worked eight nights, six hours a night, for a total of 48 hours.”

“We are excited to provide an opportunity for emerging artists like Jen Stark to bring their artistic vision to MIA and use the transformative power of art to enhance the customer experience at the airport,” said Miami-Dade Aviation Department Director Emilio T. González.  “Once again, MIA is at the forefront of exposing the work of these talented artists to an entirely new audience.”

In Starks’ own words, “Meltdown is a large-scale mural depicting organic patterns oozing down, creating a waterfall of colors. My artwork concentrates on the hypnotic, time-intensive process of cutting and layering. The patterns I create mimic the repetitive intricate layers of plants as well as the geometric framework of the universe.”

Meltdown is Stark’s latest project and expands on her previous work of creating complex colorful sculptures from paper and other media.  Her work frequently explores ideas of replication and infinity, echoing the patterns and intelligent designs found in nature."


#LIGHTSHOP with Paul Kasmin Shop

During Art Basel Miami I will have a new light sculpture edition available through Paul Kasmin Shop. The opening will take place at the Soho Beach House on Miami Beach.

PK SHOP x MdM #LIGHTSHOP will be open daily from December 4 - 7, 2014, 11AM - 6PM at the Soho Beach House, Miami Beach located at at 4385 Collins Avenue.  Featuring artist editions by Mattia Bonetti, Saint Clair Cemin, FriendsWithYou, Marcia Grostein, Deborah Kass, Claude Lalanne, Elle Muliarchyk, Ivan Navarro, Courtney Smith, Jen Stark, and other artists in collaboration with the traveling ethical fashion pop-up Maison de Mode, this year marks PK SHOP's second collaboration with MdM, founded and curated by creative director Hassan Pierre and social activist and Town & Country editor Amanda Hearst and collaborator Lily Kwong.

Tunnel / 11" x 12" x 14" / hand-cut MDF wood, spray paint, varnish, glue, light bulb & 12 ft cord / 2014


Pool Party Miami

I'm excited to announce a new limited edition pool float I designed for a FriendsWithYou X Grey Area curated pool party at Soho Beach House on Friday Dec 5th from 4-8pm. Come out, celebrate with us, and bring your bathing suit! Please RSVP to this email if you plan to come:  rsvp@thegreyarea.com

Grey Area Presents, Pool Party, a limited edition series of artist designed pool toys curated in collaboration with FriendsWithYou! From a giant googly-eyed rock by FriendsWithYou, to a rainbow colored intergalactic wheel by Jen Stark, to a pair of oversized pink breasts by Misaki Kawai, to a seven-and-half-foot tall basketball player by Devin Troy Strother, these inflatable sculptures expand the limits of how art can be experienced. Join in on the fun and experience art in an entirely new way!


Studio 360

The radio show 'Studio 360' recently posted an article about my work on their blog. Check out the post HERE.

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Psychedelic Paper Art or High-Level Math?

By Sruthi Pinnamaneni

Jen Stark's lush paper landscapes seem both psychedelic and scientific. Using trippy shapes and colors, she draws you into a place of quiet mystery. It's the kind of work that's equally at home on the covers of science magazines and billboards.

Mathematicians, in particular, get rather touchy feely about Stark's work — they send her notes comparing her sculptures to complex equations and theories of infinity. One e-mailed her a paper by Cornell University mathematician Karen Vogtmann, pointing out the similarities between Stark's Burst and Vogtmann's concept of Outer Space. That's not the space we know with the sun and the stars but rather a mathematical idea. An Outer Automorphism is a collection of groups, each filled with ways to map points of an object to itself, while maintaining the object’s deeper structure. It can get your brain all twisted up just thinking about it and so can Stark’s art objects.

Stark is not a mathematician or scientist. She studied art in Maryland and in 2004, spent a summer in Aix-en-Provence. She found she couldn’t afford French pastels or oil paints, so she bought blocks of kiddy construction paper and began cutting. The meticulous, sequential work felt meditative, Stark says.

A single sculpture can take months to finish, built layer by wafer-thin layer. Stark makes everything by hand and has to pace herself so she doesn’t wreck her fingers. She's come up with a few cheats: she wears mittens and pads her X-Acto knife with cotton balls. Having a sense of humor helps too. For one sculpture, Stark cut 10,000 shapes of paper every day for 100 days. The title of the piece: How to Become a Millionaire in 100 Days.

"Way Out West" Public Art Billboard

I just created a  billboard "Driptych" in San Francisco through The Art City Project. If you're in the city, go take a look. In San Francisco on 16th & South Van Ness.

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July 7th - August 17th, 2014

Join us for the Way Out West launch event on July 17th!

The Art City Project proudly presents Way Out West, a celebration of the idea of California and its history as fertile ground for dreamers, pioneers, and counterculture. The exhibition reflects on the changing social landscape of the West Coast and explores the role of contemporary art in public spaces.

Way Out West revisits the California experience by transforming outdoor advertising into new space for art to live and breathe. The month-long installation — which spans billboards, transit shelters, bus takeovers, and other alternative space throughout San Francisco’s transitional inner Mission neighborhood — will feature art from contemporary artists with roots in California.

Brett Amory / Apex / Pakayla Rae Biehn / Anthony Discenza Double Zero (Annie Vought and Hannah Ireland) / Jeremy Fish Casey Gray / Desirée Holman / Chris Johanson / Jet Martinez Alicia McCarthy /Alia Penner / Andrew Schoultz Dave Schubert / Jen Stark / Zio Ziegler

and featuring artwork by Creativity Explored artists Andrew Li, John Patrick McKenzie, and Kate Thompson

Curated by Tova Lobatz and Jenny Sharaf

New York Times

The New York Times Magazine posted a photo of my new public art billboard on their blog. It is a full city project organized through Art City "Way Out West".

In San Francisco, where tensions between established artist communities and Silicon Valley continue to rise, Luke Groesbeck, a former tech worker and the founder of the fledgling public art organization Art City, wants to help his hometown reinvest in the former. “This is a city with a major arts and cultural legacy,” he says. “How do we honor that? Then an idea came up and I got fixated on it: What happens when you turn an entire city into a gallery? Is it possible?”

From now until Aug. 17, San Franciscans will get to find out. As part of Art City’s Way Out West project, Groesbeck, along with his crew of curators and organizers, worked with advertising companies and the local creative community to coordinate his organization’s pilot urban art takeover. Eleven billboards, four buses and three transit shelters in the Mission District are being resurfaced with works from 20 artists, many of whom have long-running involvements in San Francisco’s street art scene. These include the graffiti artist Apex, whose works live on building walls near major streets like Valencia, and members of the Mission School movement like Chris Johanson and Alicia McCarthy, who began collecting praise in the ’90s for their Sol LeWitt-like installations of busy, ribboned color.

The project isn’t just about the pieces themselves. It’s also about what they’ll replace: advertising. “Today, San Francisco has about 7,500 ad spaces, which reach tens of millions of people in a given month,” Groesbeck explains. “We’re doing this to illustrate a different possible future, where in each neighborhood we’re instead surrounded by art and contemporary art plays a major role in our lives.”

The subject of art versus commerce is a timely one in the Bay Area, especially in the once-gritty, rapidly gentrifying Mission. “Artists, musicians and other creatives that make San Francisco what it is are being pushed out,” says Brett Amory, an internationally exhibited artist and local resident who is also participating in the project. “The Mission District is one of the areas getting hit hardest by this change. It’s a very appropriate place to have art by local artists displayed, as a reminder of what the city is really made of.”

Groesbeck, for his part, thinks the project will help San Francisco remember its roots. “I think this is a way to do something positive,” he says, “and hopefully, give back to the city.”

 

Art Alliance: The Provocateurs

I'll be showing 2 new pieces in a group show in Chicago from July 31 - August 4, 2014. Art Alliance: The Provocateurs will be held at Block Thirty Seven, 109 N. Dearborn Street, in a 25,000 square foot space encompassing an entire city block in the heart of the Loop. More information at: http://www.artalliance.com/info/

4-lores-02Cosmographic / 34" x 37" x 4" / acid-free paper, holographic paper, glue, wood / 2014

Splatter-01-loresSplatter / 60" x 48" x 1" / acrylic paint on MDF / 2014

Splatter-06-loresSplatter (detail) / 60" x 48" x 1" / acrylic paint on MDF / 2014

"Dazed & Confused" at Eric Firestone Gallery

Two of my latest sculptures will be exhibited in a group show in East Hampton, NY at Eric Firestone Gallery

Dazed & Confused, Group Exhibition

May 24th-June 15th, 2014

Opening Reception: Saturday, May 24th, 2014 | 6-9 PM

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Full Circle / 36" x 36" x 76" / Latex spray paint on PVC, monofilament / 2014Full Circle / 36" x 36" x 76" / Latex spray paint on PVC, monofilament / 2014

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Glow / 63" x 40" x 4" / acid-free paper, holographic paper, glue, wood, acrylic paint / 2014

Ghosting Volume #8 - Film screening in Los Angeles

On Saturday March 29th, my animation "Believer" will be featured in a film screening in Los Angeles called Ghosting.tv. Feel free to come out and see some amazing short films and animations! Al Jarnow, Semiconductor, Jen Stark & Joe Merrell (in stereoscopic chromadepth!) And a special presentation of 16mm by: Lost and Found Film Club.  More info at http://ghosting.tv

March 29th 8pm

Ghosting Volume #8 1205 N Main St Los Angeles CA

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Ghosting is a monthly hang out for experimental animators and video artists.

Short screenings by a rotating group of artists will be featured each month. Come and hang out! Network with your peers OFFLINE in a chill environment lubricated by your favorite spirits. BYOB!!!!!!!!!!!!