Discipline: Visual Art – sculpture

Michelle Jaffé

Discipline: Visual Art – sculpture
Region: New York, NY
MacDowell Fellowships: 2005

Since 2000 I have explored space and volume in two separate yet complementary ways: in sculpture and sound, creating participatory installations. I work with materials such as aluminum, steel, nylon plastic, vinyl, felt, foam, video, sound, and SuperCollider. Often the sculptures are distilled images of clothing, abstracted to elemental form, where I investigate their syntax as shelter, both psychic and architectural space.

I incorporate sound as an equally important medium in which to experience space viscerally as a dimensional volume full of association and memory. I am interested in pre-cognitive states of mind, reaching deep into collective memory, while referencing design, fashion, cultural cues, and our current social and political space.

Since 2008, I have been a fiscally sponsored artist of the New York Foundation for the Arts, and have been awarded grants from NYSCA, Queens Council on the Arts, and residencies at MacDowell and Djerassi.

“Wappen Field” was exhibited at Beall Center for Art + Technology at UC Irvine, Bosi Contemporary, NY and Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Additional solo exhibitions at Wald & Po Kim Gallery, Susan Berko-Conde Gallery, Brooklyn College, Harvestworks Digital Media, Broadway Gallery in NY, and site specific installations in Long Island City and Djerassi. My art works are in private collections and 30 design works are in the permanent collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Fashion Institute of Technology, and Museé de la Mode et du Costume in Paris.

While at MacDowell, she completed six new sculptures. She also began research and work for a new sound installation.

Studios

Alexander

Michelle Jaffé worked in the Alexander studio.

Originally designed to be a visual art gallery, this facility was built in memory of the late John White Alexander (1856-1915) and funded by Elizabeth Alexander and their son James. John White Alexander was highly regarded as a portrait painter and, in the early part of the 20th century, served…

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