Jennifer Rochlin's first monograph covers over 7 years of artistic practice and gathers more than 40 works, illustrated by 131 color plates. The publication features essays by journalist and writer Alexis Okeowo and by artist Tony Marsh.
Jennifer Rochlin (born 1968 in Baltimore, Maryland) lives and works in Los Angeles. Inspired by a ceramic program that she was developing at a local school, Rochlin, trained as a painter, started experimenting with transposing her imagery from the canvas to the clay. Gradually she became more interested in the way that sculptures could work with narrative, so the vessels became the container of the story. Rochlin's pots are created by gradually building up coils of clay in a spiraling fashion, through which the marks of her hand are left imprinted on the surface of the clay. For this reason, her pots possess a distinctive form, with their motifs at times depicted in response to those forms, weaving a story in three-dimensional space. The lush flora and fauna of California is often taken up as a motif. Other motifs include pop-cultural references, decorative patterns, personal narratives and more recently, art-historical references such as Brueghelgiving a new context to a world-famous artwork that has been prized for centuries. The artist's work, which combines the positive aspects of two-dimensional painting and three-dimensional pottery, has garnered acclaim for their richness of expression.
