Q&A With Jen Stark

JS: When I was a teenager, my older sister was in medical school. I would flip through her anatomy textbooks, looking at the photos of dissections and all the crazy layered diagrams. Then I had a turning point while I was in college. I was trying to save some money, so I decided to purchase the most affordable art material I could find, which was a stack of construction paper. I brought it back to the studio, and I started doing a kind of dissection. I really liked the idea of transforming a common material like paper into something unexpected. 

JS: I became a professional artist in 2007. I was working, saving money, and I just decided to make the leap and quit my job. Around that time, blogs were popular. My artwork is colorful and visually enticing. So a lot of people were reposting my work, and there were a couple blogs that went viral. That got my work out to a bigger audience. Then in 2015, I was asked to do a couple of animations for the MTV Video Music Awards. Millions of people saw my work and that helped propel it forward.

JS: My inspiration comes from color theory, designs in nature, even math equations like the golden ratio and the Fibonacci sequence. For example, I’m interested in how the spiral appears in nature, like a snail shell or a galaxy. 

JS: I think of my work like an abstract version of evolution. There are different generations, and one informs the next and then informs the next, slowly evolving and changing. And eventually it turns into this big collection of different shapes. 

JS: I love working with rainbows, and I have very specific rules about what colors should be next to each other. I usually put warms next to cools and lights next to darks, which helps make the color pop. I like juxtaposing different colors and seeing how they react with each other. 

JS: I like to have a few different projects at once, and I love to paint. Sometimes the sculptures inform the paintings, and the paintings inform the sculptures. The paintings are almost like 2-D translations of the sculptures. 

JS: I started with an outdoor mural at a hotel in South Beach, Miami, where I’m originally from. That opened the door to the next one and so on. I love making public art because it gets me out of the studio. My body is more involved, I’m outdoors, and I'm painting these big shapes. I also love public art because a bigger audience can see it. People who may not go into galleries or museums are able to view the work.

JS: That whole world has been a really fun curveball. In college, I was an animation minor. I was really interested in stop motion and making my paper sculptures come alive with animation. That love of animation carried through the years. Then when the NFT world happened, I got really obsessed with it. I loved the idea that artists have autonomy and freedom because they’re connected to their work forever on the blockchain. So if my NFT resells, I instantly get a small percentage of that sale. 

JS: I definitely see NFTs as a future of art. Some of the fine art world doesn’t accept it. Some of it does. But it’s happening. It’s just a new tool for artists to use, to get their artwork out there and have permanence on the blockchain, which is really, really cool. I love seeing artists push the boundaries of what it can do. I’m also in direct contact with my collectors now. There’s no middleman between us. So I think it’s really interesting to have a relationship with your collectors.

JS: Yep. I’m presented with new opportunities all the time. For example, collectors can introduce me to other artists and suggest that we collaborate. 

JS: Being a woman artist has been a challenge. We have to do a little more to get ourselves out there. Sometimes when people hear I’m an artist, they ask what my real job is. People probably wouldn’t ask a man those questions. To overcome that, I just try not to listen to the noise. I’m pretty stubborn, and I just go for it.