Jean Blackburn

Available works at 
Madelyn Jordon Fine Art

Jean Blackburn's sculptures, paintings, and works on paper addresses the dynamic interplay between domestic objects, experience and meaning. She manipulates everyday objects to suggest that they, like we, are in a process of redefinition. These objects have strong domestic associations suggesting familial relationships and situations.

With her works on paper, Jean Blackburn begins with images scanned from various home furnishing catalogs (Pottery Barn, Crate and Barrel, Williams and Sonoma, etc.) and interior design magazines. Once printed, the images are then modified with layers of silkscreened line drawings and hand painted elements in gouache. The artist is fascinated by the carefully constructed, highly marketable realities the catalogs present. The intimate facades, embedded with preconceived values and narratives, allow us to construct or maintain our identities and self-perceptions which give form to larger cultural forces such as fashion, class structure, economic and social status, and global marketing.

Jean Blackburn received her M.F.A. from Yale University and B.F.A. from Rhode Island School of Design and is a professor at Rhode Island School of Design. Blackburn has exhibited extensively in the United States. She has been included in numerous solo and group exhibitions at galleries and museums including McDonough Museum of Art, Youngstown, OH, School of Design Museum, Providence, RI, Neuberger Museum, Purchase, NY, De Cordova Museum, Lincoln, MA, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, and others.