About
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About *
Jill Stauffer is an multimedia installation artist from Pembroke Pines, FL, with current residence in Arlington, VA. They hold an MFA in Studio Art from the University of Maryland, College Park where they have taught as a teaching assistant in Wood Sculpture, Metal Casting, and 2D Design, and as an Instructor of Record for Drawing 1. In 2019, Jill received a BA from Middlebury College with majors in Studio Art and Architectural Studies. Jill has participated in artist residencies with NE Sculpture, Josephine Sculpture Park and the Torpedo Factory Art Center. Notable exhibitions include Next Gen 11.0 at VisArts, LevelUp at Brentwood Arts Exchange, where they received the Juror’s Award, and their solo show If Saltwater Heals Wounds at Glen Echo Park. Jill’s research has been recognized by their reception of the ArtsAmp Interdisciplinary Grant and the Clarvit Research Fellowship from the University of Maryland. Their work has been featured in articles by the Washington Post and the Independent RI. In addition to their art practice, they have worked in support of community arts organizations as an arts administrator and teaching artist. Jill creates mixed media installations that explore the transmutation of the natural environment through digital documentation, artificial replication, storytelling, and memory.
Artist Statement
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Artist Statement *
On my screen I see a forest. If the forest is felled, the image will remain. The digital image of these trees becomes an afterlife - the landscape embalmed, documented, preserved. Through my studio practice I seek to answer the question of what gets lost when we memorialize the natural world through digital media and artificial replication. What happens to the way we relate to nature when an image of a forest is more readily available than the real forest? What happens when a digital representation becomes the primary reference?
My new media installations are acts of speculative design for how future generations may replicate or attempt to reconstruct past versions of the environment with preserved digital media as primary reference points. My practice is site specific - I begin each new project with research into a specific ecosystem through field work. I spend time slowly exploring on foot, observing the site, and recording what I see through digital media (audio recordings, photography, video, and photogrammetry), and supplement my explorations with research into that specific environment. I later use these digital assets and my memories to physically reconstruct the environment. The resulting installations combine organic and artificial materials to create immersive installations with kinetic components, time based lighting, and sound. Through this process of transmuting the natural world into digital assets, then making these assets physical again through 3D printing, 2D printing, projection, and sound design, I investigate how experiences and memories of the natural environment are warped through digital documentation and artificial replication.
My work negotiates the increasingly interconnected relationship between technology, memory, and nature — the quality of the representation of natural landscapes in digital interfaces, built with materials mined from the earth, increases as the natural environment is further degraded. I hope to generate dialogues about how our ability to immortalize fleeting moments in the natural environment through technology affects how we perceive, remember, and experience a rapidly changing natural world.