Red Lodge Clay Center – Short-Term Resident (AIA) 2024
Jacey grew up in rural southern Ohio. As a child she spent most of her time outside growing a garden and creating with mud, sticks, flowers and whatever art supplies were available. Her two favorite activities led to careers in art and garden design. In 1997 Jacey received a BFA in Ceramics from Xavier University, and in 2001 an MFA in Ceramics from the University of Oregon.
Following her graduate degree, Jacey taught ceramics and design courses at universities in the Pacific Northwest for twelve years. At this time, she created ceramic sculptures and mixed media installations. Jacey showed her work nationally and held artist residencies on the west coast.
In 2006 Jacey started a garden design business while continuing to teach art part time. Years later she shifted her career to the landscaping field entirely. She moved to Arkansas in 2015 and continued her gardening business, with the hope to get back to teaching soon. The opportunity arrived in 2023 at the Community Creative Center in Fayetteville, where Jacey currently teaches handbuilding classes. She is happy to be back to art making after a long break and to have the opportunity to create artwork for her garden designs.
My work is inspired by the natural world and the cycles within it, in relation to my story. My fascination with nature is the lens in which I create metaphors that tell the universal human stories of growth, transformation, and healing.
I am drawn to plants, animals, the figure, and patterns that I see in nature. In particular, the parts that create these forms, such as a thorn on a seed pod, the crevices of a peach, a reproductive organ, the mandibles of an insect, and the repeated contours of a landscape. I use these elements to make forms that examine relationships between contrasting ideas and feelings that surface through my life experiences. The things that linger in my mind and heart.
Frequent themes in my work are the connections between growth, vulnerability, and protection; attraction, desire, and repulsion; safety and danger; and giving and receiving. Relationships between opposites fascinate me, and how they are held together by truth. Making art is my process for finding authenticity, navigating my inner world, and understanding my place in the outer world.