Jennifer Balkan

Interview by Alex Nodopaka

ME: Welcome to Mannequin Envy, Jennifer. Thank you for the opportunity to ask you impertinent questions. I must say that I appreciate your bold impressionistic technique, especially in your painting series figuring sardines. Also, your series of O Fortuna nudes are magnificently scrumptious. Rubens would envy the power of your brushstroke and style.

I have in particular an affinity for the incongruous, not that canned food is. It is somewhat their witty representation as you did also in the candy series that has a touch of wicked voodoo witchcraft about them that interests me. Besides, I love smoked, pickled or marinated sea creatures in various sauces that I typically wash down with Vodka.

"Punctured Chocolate"

ME: Any plans to depict current political events?

JB: I am much more interested in “political” art that is subtle….that the viewer really has to think about. I’m not so crazy about artwork with a blatantly obvious message. I think a lot of work out there is more political than is noticed at face value. Many of us can’t help but be influenced by what is happening around us, that which ultimately seeps into our expression. The pieces that I am currently working on have meaning that could be interpreted as psychological and political. I’ve incorporated geographic maps into a number of pieces that consequently carry geopolitical messages. My fast-food paintings have slices of maps of Japan, China and Korea bound onto them. My paintings entitled “The West” and “The World” depict a figure (me) literally wearing maps, that is, a shirt constructed of maps of particular places. In “The West”, the subject is looking at the viewer, wearing North America and has bees buzzing around her. She is grasping one bee between thumb and forefinger. The bees represent the feeling of instability and impending doom. In “The World”, the subject is draped in maps of various nations, looking pensively downward, and again has bees buzzing around her head with one bee crawling up her neck. I’ve enjoyed juxtaposing map pieces into these paintings. My paintings typically have somewhat imprecise brushwork and a generally loose feel to them. So the meticulously cut and pasted map pieces offer quite a contrast to the painting style.

"The World"

Biographical Note:

I studied behavioral neuroscience at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania. After graduation, I worked my way out west to Seattle after a brief stay in Boulder where I found people not afraid to speak their minds, while I worked in a rat lab. In Seattle, I worked serving the mentally ill and developmentally disabled population. From Seattle, I was pulled to Austin to study Latin American sociology at the University of Texas. I attained my Ph.D. in 2001 after conducting anthropological fieldwork on human migration in Chiapas, Mexico in 1999.

ME: Will you ever return to sociology as a profession?

JB: I do not have any plans to return to sociology as a profession but who really knows. I do think about the possibility of utilizing some of my social research skills as a volunteer doing some public policy work.

ME: What ramifications exist between your art and your academic studies?

JB: Everything we do in life shapes and cultivates us. Although I see no direct link between my studies and my artwork, in general terms, I see the psychological nature of it related more to my undergraduate studies in behavioral neuroscience than to my graduate studies in sociology.

"O Fortuna 1"

"Chess Game"