Jen Jolliff - Found Art

I built his image entirely from the parts, packaging and paper towels we used to replace our car's disk brakes!

That's what I mean by Found Art. It's using the stuff that's all around us to make pictures of something else.

Here's my story about Found Art...

Living in semi-rural Alaska, much of what I have at hand to play with is natural material like bark, cones, plants and moose poop, or common household objects like cutlery, tools and house-building supplies. I collect them, arrange them, photograph them and then put them where they belong.

exploring radial symmetry

exploring axial symmetry

asymmetry

In 2024, California's Coastal Corridor Alliance asked me to design a plan for a series of outreach events in Orange County Parks which would culminate in an art show at a local gallery. I chose Found Art as our medium so we could combine the group's on-going beach clean-up with some pop-up art workshops for the community.

The pelican above is an assemblage I created here in Alaska to use as an example of Found Art in the grant proposal we wrote for the project. I wanted to show how everyday objects could be arranged to create images of local birds, animals, and insects.

Litter collected along Clarks Road.

Storck Park Eagle image despite building wind

Although I'd been playing around with Found Art for years, I wanted the materials we used in California to be largely human-discarded and lost items. I figured I'd try out collecting trash from my local parks and building on-site images to photograph before recycling the litter. Working outside in a park turned out to be a real challenge. Dirty materials, curious children, suspicious parents, confused safety officers... Plus, I could barely build an image and capture it in a photo before it got blown away by the wind.

One of my fieldtrips to clean trash and build art in the Anchorage Town Square led me engage with a local woman who was curious about what I was up to. I showed her the little dragon I was building and she wanted to "help." I gladly encouraged her, and she carefully placed an assortment of toiletries and drug paraphernalia on top of the dragon, but with no apparent consideration for what would be an identifiable end picture. I then suggested we take all of our objects and make a new image with an agreed upon theme.

little dragon in Town Square

first attempt at collaboration

collaborative rainbow

So what had I learned so far? Left to my own devices, I could take the time to collect and assemble fairly coherent images, but for the workshops in California, we'd have a limited timeline and a mass of people with a range of ages and abilities. In order to create gallery-worthy (or even identifiable) images out of garbage might be a tough model for the pop-up art workshops unless...

I created a series of template designs to help guide our participants' art experience. I chose to model the templates largely after species of birds, insects and animals that could be found locally in Orange County and were important to the local indigenous people.

I practiced using the templates myself, making sure I could assemble different objects to make different-looking images that were still all identifiable as a hummingbird, red hawk, coyote, etc.

I also created two free-form assemblages to honor the Acjachemen fable of "Starman." The first one I made in Alaska, using objects from around my home. The second is largely assembled from leaves, grasses, bark and trash I picked up out of the street as I was walking from my car to my hotel in California.

The first pop-up event was a huge success. Lots of people came together on a sunny day in Costa Mesa's Fairview Park to create found art images of local wildlife and learn about conservation efforts for the Santa Ana River coastal corridor! Three women from the Acjachemen tribe sang and told stories while people tried their hand at building Found Art assemblages. Local artist, Tommy Martinez, joined in the fun as well.

Our First pop-up art workshop in Costa Mesa

Tommy Martinez builds a snowy plover

Hummingbird in blue by Cory Babos

Pelican by three awesome volunteers

Hummingbird by three Acjachemen elders

Snowy Plover by Tommy Martinez

Over the summer, the California volunteers and staff I had helped to train repeated the workshops in different parks, photo-documenting the images participants created and keeping me posted on the progress as I continued exploring my own Found Art projects back in Alaska.

I made some short videos and side-by side comparison images, thinking all the while about what kind of engagement I wanted other people to have with my artwork.

The Coastal Corridor Alliance wrapped up their Art in the Parks workshops in September. We'd been talking for months about how to show the resulting images off to best advantage, and had decided on two large mosaic-murals plus a number of framed pieces for sale. They flew me down again for the art opening and we put on a great show. Many participants from the workshops came to see their work on the walls and local artist, Clair Lyle and I helped new folks experience the Found Art process.