Jasmyne Graybill Negotiation

“I make sculptures and installations that explore nature’s resilient ability to persistently adapt and reinvent itself within our constructed domestic environments. These works magnify and exaggerate the ongoing negotiations for space that arise every day between nature and domestic life. These banal negotiations take place as colonies of mold fester in the dark voids behind the walls of our homes or barnacles flourish on structures and objects in coastal regions. As a result, a complex system of relationships has emerged between nature and man-made objects and architecture, each shaping the other’s physical characteristics. My work is an investigation of this ongoing dialogue, scrutinizing the processes of adaptation and exploring how humans have influenced the evolutionary traits of nature. It is not my intention to mimic nature, but rather to take liberties and exaggerate nature’s visual language to create fictitious and invented versions of reality. Borrowing from the familiar forms of fungus, lichen, and mold, I invent and sculpt fictional organisms that graft onto manufactured domestic objects and infest the nooks and crannies of architectural spaces. Juxtaposed against the rigid contours of architecture and man-made items, these opportunistic organisms exploit inanimate structures as alternative ‘hosts.’ These ‘hosts’ provide sustenance and physical support and ultimately become a fertile hotbed of reproduction. Challenging Notions of synthetic and organic, real and imagined, these sculptures and installations elude that through the passage of time these spaces will become overtaken.”