Artlink’s new A.E. England Gallery sits next to Janet Echelman’s huge, billowing sculpture Her Secret Is Patience in Civic Space Park near ASU’s downtown campus. Jen Urso is the third artist to exhibit here. White Space runs from January 15 through the beginning of February. I spoke with Jen recently about her new work.
Scott Andrews: Your new exhibit documents in video, photos and drawings, a walk you took last summer through the 82 miles between the two towns you grew up in, Reading and Lansdale, Penn. How did you come to do such a thing?
Jen Urso: I realized I had been avoiding traveling to the Philadelphia area because of a lot of bad memories from growing up there. My way of dealing with growing up in an abusive, dysfunctional environment was to avoid it. I used to go visit a lot after I moved but would get hurt and disappointed each time. Then there was a point when I decided that I wouldn’t go back to my parents’ house. So, first, I was in denial, and then I just avoided it. Once I started dealing with all of the pain from the past, I realized the best way to handle it was to face it. I noticed that the Schuylkill River [pronounced skoo-kull] was almost a direct route from the town I lived in as a kid—Reading and Sinking Spring—to the town where I spent my adolescence, Lansdale.
I imagined that I could have floated down river from Reading and ended up in Lansdale. It seemed like such a basic journey, but it was actually very complex. You start out as this innocent, hopeful kid and then things happen that damage and change you—affecting the rest of your life. I went back because I wanted to see things new again. I thought the best way to do it was to travel that distance in a way that I could notice the most detail—walking. It’s slow and almost tedious, but eventually you get there—like attempting to recover from any past trauma.
SA: Your previous work has ranged from constructing maps of demolition spots throughout Phoenix to multi-day performances of you slowly breaking a large rock with a hammer, but your shows have always contained meticulous drawings of plants and geologic processes. Has it all been metaphor?
Jen: A lot of my previous pieces have elements of labor, repetition and maybe even futility. I used to think that this had to do with outside subjects that I was interested in and not something personal. I hated the idea of putting the personal in my work, because I thought it made for tortured-life art. But a friend helped me realize that many of the actions I was taking, like breaking a rock apart or blurring my drawings with ice, were a way of obliterating myself.
SA: How many people walked with you?
Jen: My sister Tina and my partner, Christy. I needed photo and video support and I also felt like this walk was something that both me and my sister desperately needed to do.
There was a point on the second day when I realized I had miscalculated our mileage and where we’d be able to find a hotel. We sat at a picnic table at a gas station next to a farm in the middle of nowhere. I felt like I had completely failed myself, Tina and Christy. I realized we were going to have to walk another eight or ten miles from where we were. It seemed impossible and I wanted to sink right into the ground. I began to think the whole project was ridiculous, narcissistic and stupid. But, then we kept walking—we had no other choice.
We just plodded along slowly, and after two or three miles on the shoulder of a highway and a total of almost 17 miles, we reached a hotel. It sounds incredibly cheesy, but after that, I literally wasn’t afraid of anything I might encounter. Which is like life—when you seriously don’t think you can persist and then you do. It reminded me that I weathered years of physical and emotional abuse and came out on the other end because I stubbornly had it in my head that it wouldn’t destroy me.
Jen Urso, White Space
Opening reception: January 15, 6–9 p.m.
A.E. England Gallery
Civic Space Park
424 N. Central Ave.,
Phoenix
www.aeenglandgallery.com
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