Jacquelyn Gleisner holds an M.F.A. from the Cranbrook Academy of Art and a B.F.A. with honors from Boston University. Jacquelyn was awarded a Fulbright grant to Finland in 2010 to study pattern and surface design across fashion, architecture, and fine art. In 2015 she was invited to participate in an artist's exchange in Botswana through the Art in Embassies Program.
Jacquelyn gave public lectures and workshops in Gaborone and Maun over ten days and her painting Scroll VII (2015) was included in a three-year curated exhibition at the residence of the U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Botswana, Earl R. Miller. In addition to her studio practice, Jacquelyn writes about contemporary art and has contributed to Art21, Art New England magazine, and Hyperallergic, among other places.
Her works have been shown abroad in Italy, Finland, and Botswana and in the United States, especially throughout the New England area.
Artist Statement
I am interested in patterns, surface design, and decoration. The impulse to decorate and embellish is present in ancient textiles and other forms of handicraft. Yet throughout history, cultural perceptions of ornament, color, and decoration have varied. Patterns and color have the ability to conflate or open space, to entice or repel a viewer. In 2014 I began developing a series of scrolls, based on patterns that mimic weavings and other forms of handiwork. The scrolls represent a harmony of opposites, a union of aesthetic traditions rooted in both craft and fine art contexts with references to tropes of abstract painting, especially from the 1960s and 1970s. Explicitly created on paper—a material structure that is accessible yet fragile—these scrolls are photographed in natural and constructed environments. Inside a parking garage or on a bed of snow, the scrolls become interwoven in a community and a specific setting, presenting alternative narratives about how paintings exist in this world. Recent iterations of the scrolls have been repurposed into site-specific installations. By reusing older works, the structure of my practice becomes a pattern and repetitive cycle of creation and destruction.
Awards & Grants
- 2021 Artist Responds, Connecticut Office for the Arts
- 2020 Artist Fellowship, Connecticut Office for the Arts
- 2015 Artist Exchange, Art in Embassies Program, Botswana, Africa
- 2010 William J. Fulbright Post Graduate Research Grant, Helsinki, Finland
- 2010 Aalto University, Visiting Researcher, Helsinki, Finland
Artist-In-Residence / Residencies
- 2019 Co-Creative In Residence, Ives Branch, New Haven Free Public Library
- 2019 Visiting Artist Critic, hosted by The Chart, Portland, ME
- 2016 Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Amherst, VA
- 2016 A.I.R. Studio Paducah, Kentucky
- 2014 Studio 550, Manchester, New Hampshire
Selected Solo Exhibitions / Installations
2019 Paper Over III, New Haven Town Green, Chapel Street, New Haven, CT
2019 Pegasus Gallery, Middlesex Community College, Middletown, CT
2018 Splice, Constance Lavino Bell Gallery, Ethel Walker School, Simsbury, CT
2017 Folds of the Cloak, Sharon Arts Center, Peterborough, NH
2017 Paper Over, Artspace, New Haven, CT
2017 Ouroboros, Mazmanian Gallery, Framingham State University, MA
2016 Pop Up Show, Downtown Rochester, NH. (Organized by the Rochester Museum of Fine
Arts, Rochester, NH)
2014 Sunshine Art & Design Gallery, Lancaster, PA
2011 Galleria Atski, Aalto University, Helsinki, Finland
Selected Group Installations
2021 Faculty Exhibition, University of New Haven, New Haven, CT
2021 Futur-o-logy, Ely Center of Contemporary Art, New Haven, CT
2020 Witchy & Extra Human, Ely Center for Contemporary Art, New Haven, CT 2020 Mill Street, Fair Haven, CT
2019 Sanctuary City and the Politics of the New American Dream, Creative Arts Workshop, New Haven, CT
2019 Faculty Exhibition, Seton Art Gallery, University of New Haven, CT
2019 near orbit: in state and on paper, Melanie Carr Gallery, Essex, CT
2018 Everything Happens So Much, Kelley Stelling Gallery, Manchester, NH
2018 Folded: New Acquisitions to the Artspace Flat File Program, New Haven, CT 2018 Social Patterns, The Whitney Center, Hamden, CT
2018 Satellite Show at the Ely Center of Contemporary Art, New Haven, CT
2017 TSA New York, Flat File Program 2017-18, Brooklyn, New York
2017 At Work: New Faculty Exhibition, Seton Gallery, University of New Haven, CT
2017 Interaction of Color, Ann Street Gallery, Newburgh, NY
2016 Studio 550, Manchester, NH
2015 Art in Embassies, Botswana, Africa
2015 Minumental, New Hampshire Institute of Art, Manchester, NH
2014 Flat Files Year Two, TSA Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
2014 The Principle of the Thing, Daylight Savings Gallery / Sadie Halie Gallery, Brooklyn,
NY
2014 Parallel Grounds, Daylight Savings Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
2011 Artists of Fulbright, FinnFest
2011, San Diego, CA
2010 Out of the Woods, M.F.A. Thesis Exhibition, Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit,
Detroit, MI
2010 Daimler Financial Services One Year Collection, Farmington Hills, MI
Symposiums / Conferences / Panels
2019 Workshop leader: Writing Successful Grant Proposals, College Art Association Annual Conference, New York, NY
2018 Guest Speaker: Arts Leaders Symposium, Boston University, Boston, MA
2018 Panelist: Artist as Curator, Melanie Carr Gallery, Essex, CT
2017 CAA Conference, Presentation: "The Writing Artist," New York, NY
2011 America in Living Color, Speaker – Contemporary Finnish Textile Design, Tampere, Finland
2010 American Voices xviii, Lecturer, Turku University, Turku, Finland
Selected Publications
“Beyond Banal: The Still Life Paintings of William Bailey,” The Arts Paper, September 17, 2019,
“Harmony Hammond: Material Witness, Five Decades of Art,” Art New England Magazine, July/August 2019.
"In Poor Taste," Jani Leinonen: Funeral Notice. Galerie Gmurzynska: Zurich, 2011.
Knuckles, Dawud and Russell Simmons, eds. The Art Album: Hip Hop And The Visual Arts. Fiell Publishing Limited: New York, 2012.
Woolston, Samuli, ed. The Aalto Ornament Studio: Theory as a Design Tool, Ornament in Architecture, A Research Based Design Studio, Aalto University, School of Engineering, Department of Architecture: Helsinki, 2011.
Selected Press
"Art Teacher's Lengthy Installation Challenges Assumptions about Art," West Hartford News, February 2, 2017.
Conant, Ben. (2017, June). "Making Her Point." Monadnock Ledger-Transcript.
Slater, David. (2016, February). "Art in Embassies." Peolwane, 59 - 65.
Collections / Commissions
Private collections (USA): AR, CT, FL, GA, MA, MI, NY, WA
Kathy Battista, Program Director, Sotheby’s Institute New York
U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Botswana, Earl R. Miller
Read Full CV
