THREE PHASE
CENTER FOR COLLABORATIVE ART RESEARCH AND BUILDING IN STONE RIDGE, NY
For the past several years, Jennifer Zackin has been actively experimenting with weaving a vortex on a loom installed in a ten-foot square space in her studio in Saugerties, NY. In February 2019, Zackin expanded the practice by bringing the vortex to Three Phase Center as a way to incorporate collective energies, share process, build connections, and generate spectral potential.
Geometrically speaking, a vortex is a powerful mass of whirling energy that occurs within a torus as a single surface becomes pulled into a doughnut shape by forces acting upon it through a revolving pattern of circular energy that simultaneously revolves around its own axis coplanar with a circle in three-dimensional space. This pattern can be found throughout the universe in hurricanes, galaxies, and atoms. Nikola Tesla used the torus in his experiments with energy and in the development of his famous coil. Thinking this way, Zackin's Collective Vortex Weaving becomes an inquiry into the potential energy generated through art-life processes.
JENNIFER ZACKIN works to integrate public art, sculpture, installation, performance, collaboration, ceremony, photography, video, collage and drawing into acts of reverence and reciprocity. Whether wrapping trees in patterns of brightly colored rope, growing medicinal herbs in a public garden for public use, offering large masses of rose petals to oceans and lakes, or creating absorbent tentacles she calls "hair booms" made of wool and salvaged materials to aid in the clean-up efforts of toxic spills, Zackin seeks to engage and create community through her process, bringing art and ritual into everyday life. Every act is an exploration of exchange, communion, performance, skill-sharing and mark-making. Writing in a catalogue essay about her work Lori Waxman states; "Jennifer Zackin has worked with rose petals, little plastic cowboys, bright handmade pom-poms, cheap mass-produced posters, coca leaves, and her grandfather's old Super-8 home movies. How she weaves them into rhythmic, often meditative forms depends in great part on the underlying pattern that she is able to detect and orchestrate among her diverse materials."
Zackin's work has been exhibited in national and international museums, including the Whitney Museum of American Art in NYC, The Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art in CT, The Spertus Museum in Chicago IL, Rose Museum in MA, the Wexner Center for the Arts in OH, The Contemporary Art Museum in Houston TX, Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, Høvikodden in Norway, Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston MA and the Zacheta National Art Gallery in Warsaw, Poland. Commissions include Governors Island NYC with LMCC, Katonah Art Museum NY, Socrates Sculpture Park LIC from Queens NY and the Berkshire Botanical Gardens in Stockbridge, MA. She is the recipient of fellowships and residencies, including Factory Direct at Pinchbeck Rose Farm, Art Omi, Atlantic Center for the Arts and the Skowhegan School for Painting and Sculpture.