Jessica Jackson Hutchins: Wrecked and Righteous
Exhibition Identity
Exhibition identity, poster, and book design for Jessica Jackson Hutchins: Wrecked and Righteous, Frye Art Museum January 27–May 5, 2024.
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In a walkthrough of her exhibition Hutchins described her art and the process of making as a means of “smushing up against life.” This collection of her work—spanning nearly 30-years—is laden with a potent earnestness. Wrecked and Righteous allows beauty to be made in concert with the grotesque realness of living.
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Inspired by the artist’s defiance of preciousness, I created an identity which ‘smushed’ up against the pristine wall of the gallery. I extracted mutilated and ruined letterforms directly from shapes in her sculptural and fused glass work. The result is an alphabet that speaks in the artist’s unique visual language. What “Jessica Grotesque” lacks in geometric perfection, consitency (and even legibility), it makes up for in rich and messy earnestness.
I created a poster which features an alphabet of the artist’s own making and an alphabet book, The ABCs of Jessica Jackson Hutchins, both which accompanied the the opening of the show.
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In a walkthrough of her exhibition Hutchins described her art and the process of making as a means of “smushing up against life.” This collection of her work—spanning nearly 30-years—is laden with a potent earnestness. Wrecked and Righteous allows beauty to be made in concert with the grotesque realness of living.
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The hard lived, the desperate, the urgent are much more beautiful and profound (and funny) to me than the refined or skilled.1
︎ Jessica Jackson Hutchins, An ABCs of Jessica Jackson Hutchins
Inspired by the artist’s defiance of preciousness, I created an identity which ‘smushed’ up against the pristine wall of the gallery. I extracted mutilated and ruined letterforms directly from shapes in her sculptural and fused glass work. The result is an alphabet that speaks in the artist’s unique visual language. What “Jessica Grotesque” lacks in geometric perfection, consitency (and even legibility), it makes up for in rich and messy earnestness.
I created a poster which features an alphabet of the artist’s own making and an alphabet book, The ABCs of Jessica Jackson Hutchins, both which accompanied the the opening of the show.
Installation view of Jessica Jackson Hutchins: Wrecked and Righteous, Frye Art Museum, January 27–May 5 Seattle, 2024. Photo: Jueqian Fang
Jessica Jackson Hutchins: Wrecked and Righteous is organized by Amanda Donnan, Chief Curator and Director of Exhibitions.
Lead support provided by The Ford Family Foundation, administered by Portland Institute for Contemporary Art. Generous support provided by the Frye Foundation and Frye Members. Media sponsorship provided by KEXP.
Lead support provided by The Ford Family Foundation, administered by Portland Institute for Contemporary Art. Generous support provided by the Frye Foundation and Frye Members. Media sponsorship provided by KEXP.
1Amanda Donnan, An ABCs of Jessica Jackson Hutchins: Wrecked and Righteous, Published on the occasion of Jessica Jackson Hutchins: Wrecked and Righteous, Frye Art Museum, Seattle January 27–May 5, 2024
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