Artist Bio
Born and raised in Rochester, Jacqueline is a junior at Allendale Columbia School. She has been interested in the arts for as long as she can remember, known as a child to burn through sketchbooks and pass the time in restaurants by drawing on the backs of paper placemats.
This year her first venture into photography was selected to be shown in the RIT “Start Here” regional art exhibition—she has also won a Golden Key through the Scholastic Writing and Art awards for a ceramic piece featured in last year’s Studio Art class exhibition. Ceramic sculpture first became an interest through a class at the Memorial Art Gallery she took as a child, and continues to be one of her favorite mediums to work in. Over the years she has developed an affinity for colored pencil, charcoal, and clay, and she continues to work and hone her craft.
Thesis Statement
My thesis consists of studies of different objects that have been taken out of any background context. I chose to work in colored pencil as it allows for both subtle shifts in color and a high level of detail. Industrial-looking items are things that I have always been fascinated by—first from living in a place aptly included in the “rust belt” and secondly from having a few antique collectors in my family. Much of the incomprehensible jargon I’ve heard throughout my childhood has become slightly more understandable, and the objects it pertains to now carry an aesthetic and historical importance that I explore in my thesis.
Colored pencil, I felt, was the optimal medium for this project; good for precise things like small text and shredded wire while also blending together well. I initially made pencil sketches and erased them as I went along and filled in with color—this made it so no lines were visible on the finished drawing beneath the colored pencil, but it did sometimes make it harder to keep the finished product 100% true to life. Finding my subjects mostly consisted of searching around boiler rooms and basements for neat-looking mechanisms.
A large part of what inspired me were the antiques that have come to accumulate in my house, be it porcelain signs from the 30s or bulky, six-foot tall “Sun” engine performance testers from the 60s. While I picked it primarily because of its worn metal surface, the 90-year old Mobiloil can helps in invoking that vintage look. Helping my dad to manage this collection of old “automobilia”—some people have garages completely full of the stuff, complete with unfinished shells of vintage cars—has given me more of an appreciation for it.The unfinished half of my basement that gives home to a workbench covered in old, mostly unused tools, is now a treasure trove of still-life subjects. Taking these objects completely out of their surroundings lets them exist in their own space, placing the focus solely on the hidden charm of utilitarian and often overlooked objects of everyday life.
I first delved into colored pencils when I attended a summer camp hosted at Nazareth College in 2019. My subject was a curtain suspended on a metal pole, and this project has been a sort of continuation of focusing on functional objects. I definitely learned more about how to blend and match colors, along with how to more successfully draw more technical things. A lot of it boiled down to replicating different textures of metal, which I think have improved on greatly over the years. I would definitely return to this kind of work in the future—there’s always room for improvement, and realism offers plenty of it.
Gallery
All drawings are colored pencil on paper.
Top left: “Pressure Regulator with Gauges”
Top right: “Gargoyle Oil Can”
Bottom left: “Valve and Wire”
Bottom right: “Utensils”