Hello. My name is Jennie Ekstrand, I am a studio art major concentrating in sculpture. I am originally from Blaine, Minnesota. I have about a year and a half left here at Stout and then hopefully on to grad school. (the photo on the left is a still of myself and Patrick Gantert from a new video work called Yeah Yeah Whatever (that's what you always say) by Tectonic Industries. The video will be in a show at the college of visual arts in St. Paul, MN called I'm Holding on for that Teenage Feeling running from October 30th to November 22nd 2008.

In the last year my work has concerned itself with mainly themes of memory and loss. With the death of my father in September 2005, I found a fascination with the memory of my father as well as the memories I have of my childhood. One of the first projects I completed dealing with this was You Have Your Father's Eyes, a series of 27 polaroid photographs of myself dressed as my father. I was interested in the passing down of traits, as well as

objects when a person passes away.

I continued exploring similar ideas with Paintings done as my dad that he would have painted and titled Untitled 1-16, a series of acrylic on wood paintings. I created these paintings while attempting to be my dad. I dressed like him, and thought like him. I decided he would be a painter and he would be inspired by the plaid fabrics he wore. Without being an "Educated" artist, he found himself fitting in with the painting dialogue, drawing references from modernist painters like Mondrian.

Through the exploration of old family videos I discovered a clip of my sister laughing, as I slowed the video down I found an interesting play between pleasure and pain. I created a series of photo transfers on panels to address this as well as the nature of human memory. This work is in progress as there will
be a total of 103 panels.

I've also recently become more interested in gallery work and in the past year created a gallery space along with Patrick Gantert within the applied arts building at Stout called A Clean Poorly Lighted Space. The space is an actual gallery space that takes submissions and accepts and rejects work like a gallery would. I serve as the gallery director with a curatorial staff and other supporters. We have had 4 successful shows and are working on curating the next exhibition. I am interested in the way a gallery works as well as the role of artist as curator.