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The image featured above shows the piece titled: The Frustration of the Growing Girl. The large soft sculpture is quilted and constructed into a cone shaped monument about four feet tall and created entirely out of deep blue cyanotypes. The images on the cyanotypes are old family pictures with the figures partaking in jewish ceremonies. The cyanotypes stretch past the base of the cone and climb up the wall. Around the base of the cone there are a series of collaged Polaroid images. The Polaroids show signs of physically deconstructing the images and working back into them using materials such as thread, printed images, cutout and human hair.

Cracks on Both Sides Now

Jessie Rice

polaroid prints, magazine cutouts, paper, UV prints, cyanotype, cotton fabric, thread, cotton yarn, velvet, embroidery floss, thread, human hair, 2022

Undergraduate
This project exhibits three labor intensive pieces that display my ongoing struggle being raised in a rigid orthodox Jewish household, and the resulting separation that I feel with members of my family. The catharsis of making these works has allowed me to simultaneously sort out and confront my emotions through the act of making, unpacking and displaying this confrontation through textiles —a shift that finally allowed me to sort out my relationships with my family and where I stand in terms of my Jewish beliefs. The works unfold in a particular procession, starting with The Frustration of the Growing Girl. The contrast of the soft quilted cyanotypes with the jarring imagery of the rigid polaroids reflects the contradictory feelings of immense love and anger that has been clouding my relationship with my family. The reinvented Parochet (Torah Ark curtain), Modified Parochet, is a velvet wall of hard honesty, one side open to the world, and the other sheltered from change. Jess, is ok, floats above, a loving embrace of acceptance, not yet in reach but close.