DOUG JECK – (1963 - )
Seattle artist Doug Jeck works in a variety of media – ceramics, painting, performance art,
mixed media – but he is probably best known for his figurative work, what he refers to as
“human objects.” The figures are painstakingly hand built from the ground up, meticulously
crafted and finished with paints and other materials. They draw from the tradition of heroic
sculpture but these individuals are not heroic in the usual sense. Instead they represent the
anti-hero, the everyman, who has been buffeted by life, damaged and yet somehow still
survives. The inner damage is reflected in the damage done to the figure itself by the artist:
body parts are missing or hacked off and put back in a different places, and the carriage of the
body itself reflects defeat and insecurity. In addition to his studio work, Jeck is on the faculty of
the University of Washington where he is an Associate Professor in the Ceramics Arts
Department.
ARTIST’S STATEMENT – DOUG JECK
“I‟ve looked hard at the history of the human object. I wonder the same thing about it as I do
about myself: Is what has been more blessed than what will be? This question is at the core of
everything I make and, perhaps, the reason why clay is most appropriate.
„Human Object.‟ I prefer this term to define my work instead of „figurative sculpture.‟ This is not
merely a semantic distinction. „Figurative‟ implies the removal of that which is directly human
into a symbolic representation. „Human Object‟ not only describes the uncanny presence of the
thing I make, but also refers to the focus of its content.
My work takes a long time to make. I build a hollow human body by adding thin strips of clay on
top of each other an inch at a time. I start on the ground, with the feet, and work up, slowly
defining the body, hour by hour, day after day. Each time I work on this body, which will
eventually have a face, pupils, and an implied persona, I have a different, unique combination of
encounters with the human object influencing me – a previous student critique, a BBC radio
broadcast, the Brahms 3rd Piano Concerto, the recollection of a stranger‟s gait, my latest,
seemingly brilliant epiphany on Art, my sons‟ latest perplexing questions, etc.
Throughout this process and in the finished work, I am as certain that the implied persona that
has emerged through months of this attention has been defined by it, as I am that it will
eventually become a fragmented piece of insignificant, dusty junk. Or maybe not.”1
1. Doug Jeck. “Artist Info.” http://www.virginiaagrootfooundation.org/grantrecipients.html
RESUME – DOUG JECK
1963
Born, Jersey City, NJ
1986
Appalachian Center for the Arts and Crafts, Smithville, TN, B.F.A.
1989
School of the Art Institute of Chicago, M.F.A.
1990
Illinois Arts Council Grant
National Endowment for the Arts Visual Artists Fellowship
1992
LaNapoule Foundation/NEA Travel Grant, LaNapoule, France
National Endowment for the Arts Visual Artists Fellowship
1994-1996
Assistant Professor, New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred
University, Alfred, NY
1996-present
Associate Professor, University of Washington, Seattle, WA
1997
Virginia A. Groot Foundation, 3rd Place Award
1998
Virginia A. Groot Foundation, 2nd Place Award
2000
Virginia A. Groot Foundation, 2nd Place Award
2001
Neddy Foundation Artist Fellowship, Seattle, WA
Georgette Koopman Endowed Chair in the Visual Arts, University of
Hartford, Hartford, CT
2008
Neddy Artist Fellowship Nominee
BIOGRAPHY – DOUG JECK
Doug Jeck was raised in South Florida; his family, he has said, was poor, did not own a car and
lived in the projects in a rundown section of town. His mother deserted the family when Jeck
and his brother were young and was not heard from again. Jeck and his brother grew up with
their father and later a step-mother, and the legacies of the experience of poverty and of
missing life pieces appear as themes in Jeck‟s art.
He did his undergraduate studies at the Appalachian Center for the Arts and Crafts and
received his M.F.A. from the Art Institute of Chicago. His background, he has stated, was in
music, and in a sense he fell into his way of working because he did not have the standard
approach to art instruction. He studied clay, metal, glass, wood and other media, but although
the figure would become his signature work, had no formal training in drawing or figure
modeling, instead reading and working through the studies of the human body on his own.
Doug Jeck‟s early work was intuitively based; during graduate school he made the decision to
move toward a more realistic style, working deliberately and thoughtfully. While he has worked
in mixed media, painting and performance art, Jeck is best known for his fragmented male
figures, figures which refer back to classical sculpture and begin as ideal forms. Then comes
the destruction. Body parts are removed or first removed and put back in a different place.
Some figures are on pedestals, again a reference to classical sculpture, but in Jeck‟s
sculptures, the pedestal becomes part of the figure, not a platform. The result is not the hero of
classical work, but the anti-hero, the ordinary man. The figures reflect uncertainty, not
sureness; a sense of defeat rather than triumph; damage, not perfection; an individual who has
been battered by time and life. Ultimately, however, Jeck sees in his damaged figures the true
ideal; individuals do struggle and they do get beaten up by life, but they prevail and find
meaning, and in prevailing there is beauty, there is heroism, and there is the meaning of what it
is to be human.
Jeck‟s figures are not reflections of particular people but reflections of a psychology. In that
sense, Jeck has said, they are self-portraits – not literally, but emotionally because it is his
personal psychology, of course, that is most readily available to him. The figures are “human
objects,” he has said, because they describe the human objective as well as represent it. The
fragmentation draws on his own feelings of loss and damage growing up and his grappling with
what it means to be male. Many critics have used the word “ambiguity” in describing his work,
and Jeck agrees. He has described his work as moving backwards in time to understand the
character of the artist.
The working process is a very deliberate one. No sketches are made prior to starting although
he has a general sense of the pose he is going to make. Classical sculpture featured a system
of proportion for the ideal figure, but Jeck‟s everyman does not follow those proportions.
Clay is the chosen material for several reasons. First, it is a traditional medium in ancient
sculpture and marble is a difficult, time consuming material. Second marble is also associated,
in his mind with the traditional definition of hero, that is superior individuals like gods or popes;
clay, on the other hand is a very basic material, and in choosing the humble material to
unsuccessfully mimic marble, he is reinforcing the idea that his figures are both nobody and
everybody. And third, clay, unlike marble or stone, allows the artist to change his mind, to make
decisions along the way and alter the result. No molds are used in making the figures; instead,
he relies totally on hand building and coil building. It is a slow process which allows periods of
time to contemplate the figure as it is being built. The sculptures are thus hollow, and as the
figure emerges, the artist is working inside and out simultaneously, a process Jeck sees as
symbolic of the inside pressure of the psyche and the outside pressure of the world; in short,
how man himself is constructed. As the figure evolves, the emotional content evolves as well,
the emotion expressed in the body or in some aspect of the body rather than in the facial
expression.
The figures are finished with porcelain and a thin wash of acrylic paint. Often bits of hair or other
materials are incorporated as well, some of which may burn out in the firing but enhance the act
of the creation. When the clay is nearly dry, details are added by carving with dental tools and
dull pencils. A great deal of attention is paid to these details, allowing Jeck‟s own emotions and
feelings to be released through the art. Jeck does not glaze his work but instead uses paint
after they are fired.
The fragmentation which occurs after the piece is finished is what Jeck has called “cheating
time.” In classical sculpture the piece is damaged over time by nature or other means; the
damage to Jeck‟s figures is deliberate, done by the artist himself, rather than waiting for time. In
that sense, Jeck has said, he owns something that is timeless. The entire process is not about
the production of a piece of sculpture but a working out of his interest in history, in shrinking
time, in accelerating fragmentation. He sees his work as projects not objects.
More recently Jeck has approached the figure in different ways. He made a series of figurines,
small pieces that he sees as reflective of culture rather than removed from it. A figurine is also,
by virtue of its size, something that can be possessed, held, and thus the relationship between
the artist or viewer and the object is totally different from that with a figure. He has also made
some site-specific pieces which relate to but differ from the figures. Where the artist is the
agent of destruction of the figures, the site-specific pieces will remain where they are and be
destroyed, in time, by natural forces.
In addition to his studio work, Jeck has taught at the New York College of Ceramics at Alfred,
NY, and since 1996 at the University of Washington in Seattle. While he was of the time of the
Funk Art movement and teaches in a program influenced by that movement, his own work is not
really classified that way. His work does not embrace the humor of Funk Art and he sees
himself as more in the model of artists like Stephen de Staebler, more austere and
contemplative.
Jeck‟s has received a number of awards over his career, including two NEA fellowships and
awards from the LaNapoule Foundation, the Neddy Foundation and the Virginia A. Groot
Foundation. His work is included in both private and public collections including the
International Museum of Ceramic Art, Alfred, NY; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the
Renwick Gallery at the Smithsonian Institute; the Mint Museum of Craft and Design in Charlotte,
NC; the Tacoma Art Museum and the Seattle Art Museum, both in Washington.
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY – DOUG JECK
Books and Catalogs
Beal, Suzanne. This Is Not a Group Show. Seattle, WA: School of Art, University of
Washington, 2007.
Flynn, Michael. Ceramic Figures. London: A&C Black, 2002.
Held, Peter, ed. A Human Impulse. Tempe, AZ: Arizona State University Art Museum, 2008.
Hopper, Robin. Making Marks. Iola, WI: Krause Publications, 2004.
Lauria, Jo, Gretchen Adkins, Garth Clark, et al. Color and Fire. New York: Rizzoli International
Publications, 2000.
Mathieu, Paul. Sexpots. Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2003.
Tourtillott, Suzanne J. E. The Figure in Clay. New York: Lark Books, 2005.
Weekly, Nancy. Anne Currier, Val Cushing, Andrea Gill, John Gill, Wayne Higby, Doug Jeck.
Alfred, NY: New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University, 1996.
Periodicals
Berk, Amy. “Chris Komater at 509 Cultural Center and Doug Jeck at Dorothy Weiss Gallery.”
Artweek 28 (July 1997): 24-25.
Bowman, Stephanie. “Kansas City.” Art Papers 26 no. 4 (July/August 2002): 48.
Brown, Glen R. “Pygmalion‟s Gaze Reimagined.” Ceramics Monthly 53 no. 6 (June-August
2005): 16-18.
Collins, Lucy. “Atlanta, Georgia.” Art Papers 27 no. 5 (September/October 2003): 43.
Dahn, Jo. “Sculptor and Figure.” Ceramic Review no. 219 (May/June 2006): 34-37.
“Doug Jeck.” Sculpture (Washington, D.C.) 16 (October 1997): 56.
Joiner, Dorothy. “Poetic Expressions of Mortality.” Ceramics Monthly 54 no.6 (June/July 2006):
21-22.
Kangas, Matthew. “Doug Jeck: Moments to Uncertainty.” American Ceramics 12 no. 1 (1995):
38-43.
Koplos, Janet. “Report from Seattle: Plugged in and Caffeinated.” Art in America 93 no. 8
(September 2005): 62-67, 69, 71.
Levin, Elaine. “Crossing Boundaries: Colour and Fire.” Ceramic Review no. 187
(January/February 2001): 24-27.
Littman, Brett. “Doug Jeck.” American Ceramics 14 no. 1 (2002): 51.
Reichert, Elizabeth. “Encountering Hybridisation: Avant-Garde Ceramics and Mixed Media.”
Ceramics (Sydney, Australia) 68 (2007): 47-52.
_______. “One Part Clay.” Ceramics Monthly 54 no. 9 (November 2006): 21-22.
Risatti, Howard. “Richmond, Virginia: „North American Ceramic Sculpture Now‟: Hand
Workshop Art Center.” Sculpture (Washington, D.C.) 23 no. 9 (N 2004): 76-77.
Selz, Peter Howard. “Doug Jeck at Dorothy Weiss.” Art in America 85 (September 1997): 118119.
“{Sex Pots}.” Ceramics Monthly 51 no. 7 (September 2003): 36.
Welch, Adam. “North American Ceramic Sculpture Now.” Ceramics (Sydney, Australia) no. 58
(2004): 92-96.
Video and Other Media
Autio, Chris. “Archie Bray Foundation Odyssey.” 2008. VHS
Steblen, Brian, and Alexis Clare. “Out of the Fire; the Art and Science of Ceramics.”
Rochester, NY: WXXI Public Broadcasting Council, 200-. VHS
GALLERY REPRESENTATION – DOUG JECK
Pacini Lubel Gallery, 207 2nd Avenue South, Seattle, WA 98104
WEB SITES – DOUG JECK
http://www.researchchannel.org/prog/displayevent.aspx?rID=2024
Link to “What Follows” featuring an interview with Doug Jeck, February, 1999
http://www.uwic.ac.uk/ICRC/issue008/articles/13.htm
“Cheating Time” transcript of talk by Doug Jeck
September 2008