The Process of Ambiguity: Interviewing Jessica Teckemeyer
By Juana Berrio
Convinced that the only thing she doesn’t like about art is its wrong “elite reputation�, Jessica Teckemeyer is actively creating fascinating sculptures that reveal and make us conscious of our relationship with our own bodies, our consumerist instincts, and the natural and metropolitan environments we have contact with.
Native of the small community of Frazee, in the Midwestern American State of Minnesota, Teckemeyer received her BFA from Minnesota State University Moorhead in 2004, where she fell in love with sculpture and engaged in a material and conceptual conversation with it. She is currently pursuing her MFA at the University of Minnesota, where she works and interacts with other important and worldwide recognized artists such Josh Winkler, Jasmine Wallace, Peter Thompson, Meng Tang, Chad Rutter, Laura Primozic, Lindsay Montgomery, Jason Gaspar, David Donovan, Rashad Butler, T.J. Barnes, and Juana Berrio.
During her high school years, when the “what career question� started to be present in her mind, she was specially attracted by the idea of studying art. However, the way she got to her final decision was quite unusual. She still remembers that subjects such as Math, Science or English came pretty easy to her, but what about art? “Art was challenging because it took me more effort, so I was intrigued by that.� As it is true for many artists, at certain point she also considered the possibility of being involved in a more commercial carrier such as design, but then she realized that art made her think more because she couldn’t easily figure it out.
During the transitional semesters of the beginning of college, she decided to continue taking some chemistry courses while she was entering in the “art world�. Nowadays, she admits that those chemistry college courses, plus having a chemist aunt, have influenced her current artwork with the “problem solving process�, which is an essential ingredient in her artistic practice. In fact, the process of making her works is probably one of the things Teckemeyer enjoys the most. And there is no doubt about it since she works with a wide variety of materials like fiberglass, plaster, fabric, feathers, and even balloons!
Some of the works that have contributed Teckemeyer to gain recognition and create her unique artist language are her interactive sculptures. The aims of these texture-based pieces are to highlight the fact that we experience everything through our senses and to give people the opportunity to be aware and connected with their own bodies. In addition, she loves the idea that, while the audience interacts with her pieces, they may feel that they are interacting with art, and somehow this may help them to be more interested in art in general.
Despite the fact that Teckemeyer’s work is always changing and has explored different territories, she recognizes there is a common link, a connection among all her pieces. She believes each project takes her to the next one, especially when it comes to their physicality and material process. After using some materials in one project, she continues with the next one in a progressive or oppositional way. Some times, she continues using the same technique and process, but after working with some processes, such as fiberglass, which is very toxic and requires a specific outfit, she will probably try to work with fabric or something non-toxic. The decisions she makes about her artistic process are not only related with the concept of her pieces themselves, but also depend on the relationship between the materials and her body.
Although Teckemeyer does not recall a single specific life experience that has marked her artwork, she believes that all experiences get translated in the artist work, “there are specific things that are tight to your environment.� For example, she thinks that her projects based on the idea of consumerism and materialized through several interiors of purses made out of plaster, could be understood anywhere in America, because “it kind of mimics our environment.� Nonetheless, she also believes that some site-specific experiences and ideas could be also understood in different contexts. This is the case of her most recent work, which will be exhibited in November at the Goethe Institute Gallery in Montevideo, Uruguay. In this piece “I talk a about the duality of the Minnesota I love, between the metropolitan and the natural environment�. Regardless of its specific Minnesota’s essence, she thinks this installation is open and could be understood anywhere, because of the rural and urban contrast it reveals.
In fact, Teckemeyer’s work has a particular ambiguous character that is always inviting you to decode. Is it because she already resolved her intriguing high school question about art and now wants us to figure it out?