Senior Spotlight: Jack Bancroft

I work in a multitude of materials, finding interest in them for a project until they are alien again. I do not like working with physical materials which I know well, I feel it may be wrong, as though I am taking the easy route.

Wax + String Studies

My sculptural work has been focusing on the understanding of self, and the mind.  The reasons for the things that I do and think that lead to the negative resolutions in my actual life.  Working through real life problems tends to just be the mode in which I work, as creating brings out the deepest fears, pain, and trauma that I will not allow myself to feel during regular waking life. Aspects of my work are trying to understand mental illness without accepting that it is the core of my problems, which tends to create dangerous metaphysical barriers.

Forged Steel Rings

            I have a love hate relationship with art, I think I always have.  To create is to suffer often times, but the reality on the other side is lighter, softer, and more real.  When life stops feeling real, when I stop feeling real, when I want nothing to do with art at all, I know that I have a real reason to continue making.  I have continued creating for years because I need that form, I need that deeply seated pain to have some sort of outlet.  In the worst and best ways possible, I need to be able to agonize through every emotion that I bottle up, every moment I suppress until I can find a better place to deal with it.

  

   

CAST IRON HEARTS for HEART HEALTH DAY 2019

            My art making process may appear to be neurotic, and detrimental, but I find few forms of creation to mean so much.  Without the immensity of the emotions that hold me down, the work cannot find a proper meaning or reality. Without the emotions dousing the entire work, from physical beginning to end, the piece does not feel grounded in any truthful reality.

            Aside from physical sculptural works, I also work with video and sound as mediums.  On many projects I will try to include some digital media aspect with them.