Elemental Form At Galleri Urbane

Galleri Urbane is pleased to announce Elemental Form, a solo exhibition of the latest works by New York based artist Jessica Drenk. This represents the artist’s seventh solo exhibition at the gallery. Exhibition on view: September 6 - October 25, 2025

They look like agates, banded bullseyes whose whorls take shape over millenia. Or geodes broken open to reveal their crystal-filled interiors. Or then again they resemble sinuous riverbeds seen from aerial perspectives. Jessica Drenk’s junk-mail sculptures, the pieces in Elemental Form, juxtapose slow time—the gait of erosion, counted in eons—with quotidian rhythms measured by the arrival of the mail, the psychic and temporal weightlessness of sales and deals. Ephemera versus eternity.

Building in layers, Drenk renders erosion, sedimentation and crystallization human-made. Arguably, our Anthropocene moment gives meaning to the reversal her labor provokes, an anomaly at a time when humans and the natural world often seem irreparably at odds. But verisimilitude is clearly not Drenk’s goal: not mimesis but transformation. “The poles of the earth have wandered. The equator has apparently moved,” John McPhee writes in Annals of the Former World, his Pulitzer Prize-winning nonfiction tome about NorthAmerican geology. The fixity of latitude and our agreed-upon compass points are not set in stone, it would seem, although we look to them to orient ourselves. Drenk’s new work highlights this ambiguity: fluidity rather than fixity emanates from her pieces.

This ambiguity—this being in “the state of flow”—lies at the heart of Drenk’s practice. Her works are rebellious: what seems—and is—solid is also constantly shapeshifting. And so we wonder. What does it mean to be set in stone? Might a kind of alchemy change how we perceive form or matter or fixity? It is our sense of time that wobbles and with it our understanding of the life cycle of objects through time. Could they mean more than we believe? Could they suggest, in fact, their opposite? Exactly, yes, Drenk seems to say: what if they could?

Colossal Article on Implements

Thank you to Kate Mothes of Colossal for highlighting my Implements sculptures. Here is an excerpt of the story:

Undulating, organic sculptures emerge from thousands of drawing utensils in Jessica Drenk’s ongoing Implements series. Fascinated by the aesthetics and behavior of multiples of mass-produced objects, the artist (previously) chose pencils because of their stackable shape and “the thought that, if I sanded them, I could make a sculpture that drew on itself in the making: sandpaper would smear the graphite while the piece was being shaped,” she tells Colossal.

Implements explores the relationship between interior and exterior, the container and the contained. The inside of each work showcases the out-of-the-box objects, while the outside has been cut and smoothed to reveal lengths of graphite and bare wood.

Drenk has been making sculptures with pencils for several years, and the shapes continue to evolve. One of the challenges of working with the material is the difficulty of gluing pre-painted, non-porous surfaces together. “In response to this, I once ordered 30,000 unpainted pencils to make larger sculptures that could be glued into more dynamic shapes,” she says.

Over time, the Implements series has influenced further sculptures, such as “Speleothem” and “Formation,” in which the pencils compose larger dynamic forms. “In a sense, both aspects of the pieces resemble nature,” Drenk says. “Even the hexagon is found in nature, from beehives to columnar basalt rocks.”

Implement 73

Pencils

21” x 22” x 18”

Previously, my work has been in Colossal—link to the story here.

Making their Mark at Heather Gaudio Fine Art

Making their Mark installation view

Heather Gaudio Fine Art is pleased to present Making Their Mark: 7 Women in Abstraction, the gallery’s inaugural exhibition at its new location at 382 Greenwich Ave in Greenwich, CT. The show ran from September 21 – November 4th.

On view were paintings, works on paper and sculpture by seven women artists, all of whom form part of the gallery’s roster. These artists share a dynamic approach to creating their works, with each paying unique attention to the materials and their properties. Their works carry distinct, non-figurative aesthetic perspectives that present current themes and preoccupations, such as our relationship with nature, its physical characteristics, cultural contexts, evocations of time and place, and references to interior states of being.

Aggregate Fold

Junk Mail

32 x 150 x 2 1/2 inches

Aggregate Triptych 2 (left)

On Edge at Galleri Urbane

Galleri Urbane is pleased to announce On Edge, an exhibition of artwork by collector favorite Jessica Drenk. The gallery has exhibited Jessica’s work since 2013, this represents the fifth solo exhibition by the artist.

On Edge installation view

A first look never sounds the depths of an oeuvre by Drenk. The artist is fed by her fascination with natural patterns. During hikes–at times to the same canyon in the American Southwest– she lets nature imprint upon her its myriad shapes and systems of order. The result is a delicate and encyclopedic attention to the vast possibilities of form as meticulously created and perceived.

On Edge installation view

Implements (left) and Sheaf (right)

Each found and repurposed material is a cipher that highlights its physical properties while transmuting them. In this show, based around the line and the edge, Drenk continues her work with book pages in Sheaf. Drenk lays out clumps of pages, nails them together, saws them, and nails them together again in an iterative process of separating and gathering again. Wax liberates fresh translucencies, like water over stones. “I also love the idea of these words, thoughts, and stories being completely disrupted and reshaped into something that is now read aesthetically,” she says. Compressed and rhythmic, expansive in scale, her work is an exercise in shapeshifting.

Jessica with Aggregate Strata 2

With the new Aggregate series, strata shot through with the colors of junk mail, the viewer is brought into rapport with geological time and its opposite (“the momentary glimpse versus eons”), but also the time of human labor—the layering of time in her own craftsmanship, like the rocks and ridges forged in the crucible of the earth. Meanwhile, “Color is the indicator that you should get closer,” she says. Instinct suggests the surface is not what it seems. Opposites and extremes, the macro and the micro, naturing and denaturing come into play.

Aggregate Stone 1

Junk mail

20h x 41w x 4d inches

Lacunae

Archival book binding tape

On Edge installation view

On Edge installation view

While Drenk often returns to materials time and again, her practice allows for both depth and breadth in material investigation. Her 2020 show brought Q-tip cotton swabs to new levels (this installation was recently featured at the NADA x Foreland fair in New York) and this exhibition brings a new material: tape. As with all of her work, “Some things end up looking like a magnified version of something else,” Drenk says. But mimicry or verisimilitude are only incidental. The point is to invite the viewer to reconsider. “My goal is to take a material as far away from itself as possible while still retaining the ability to tell what it is,” she says. The viewer is left with a visual (even ontological) quandary that invites closer looking. Drenk activates human curiosity as an aesthetic tool for liberation: she wants us to simply see—and see anew.

Dendrite at NADA x Foreland

Adah Rose Gallery is pleased to present Dendrite, installed by the artist during the NADA curated show in Catskill, NY. The 2023 edition of NADA x Foreland featured over 40 participating galleries and over 60 exhibiting artists in a collaborative exhibition cascading through the historic Foreland campus.

Dendrite installation view

The 2023 edition of NADA x Foreland featured over 40 participating galleries and over 60 exhibiting artists in a collaborative exhibition cascading through the historic Foreland campus in Catskill, New York.

Dendrite

Cotton swabs and plaster

Jessica Drenk (right) and Adah Rose (left) installing Dendrite

Reclaimed Topographies at Heather Gaudio Fine Art

Heather Gaudio Fine Art is pleased to present Jessica Drenk: Reclaimed Topographies, the artist's second solo exhibition at the gallery. The show will feature newly created works and will run January 28th-March 11th, 2023.  The public is invited to attend an opening reception for the artist on Saturday, January 28th, 4-6pm.

Drenk is known for creating eye-catching transformations with commonplace manufactured objects, such as pencils, books, PVC pipe, and even Q-tips. The artist's wall and floor sculptures and installations explore the effects of accumulation and aggregation through a labor-intensive process that recontextualizes the material to evoke natural phenomena. Drenk's artworks impress in scale and detail, and close examination reveals the wonders of the nuanced materials and structures that create the whole. While she questions our relationship with consumerism and mass-production, Drenk's proposal to alternative notions on humankind's footprint on the world, space and time is ultimately an aesthetic gesture, with materials repurposed to visually poetic ends. 

Aggregate Triptych
Junk mail and plaster
39” x 85” x 3”

The exhibition will feature Drenk's most recent Aggregate series, a new body of work that takes the artist's investigations to another realm, regenerating materials that would naturally end up in a landfill. For this series, Drenk uses junk mail and other printed paper, turning them into reliefs resembling geological formations. The artist cuts, manipulates, and glues the sheets into layers, alternating and varying them according to color, finish, texture, and weight of the sheets. Once hardened from the applied glue and archival coating, the accumulated stacks are spliced, cut, and sanded into shapes that evoke topographic slices, strata, or even basalt organ pipes formed from ancient volcanic activity.  Another wondrous series, Contours, consists of layered planks of plywood that have been artfully carved and ground to appear like eroded stone or terrains worn down by natural forces.

Compressions (left) and Contour (right)

The exhibition will also feature an ambitious, if but intricate, site-specific installation entitled Dendrite, created with accumulations of an extremely ordinary artifact, the Q-tip. Clustered together, they from branches that proliferate from the ceiling down the wall to colonize the floor, reminiscent of organic materials such as calcified vines or frosted pine needles.  Other works in the show that hint at nature are carved marble sculptures taking on the appearance of icebergs or other ephemeral iced formations.  Drenk has enjoyed a prolific career since earning her MFA in 2007.  She has been the subject of many solo and group exhibitions and her works are in many notable private and corporate collections, including Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven; Fidelity Investments in Boston; and Bank of America in Houston.

Dendrite installation

Huntington Museum of Art Master Artist Program

May 8 - August 8, 2021

The Huntington Museum of Art will welcome Jessica Drenk as a Walter Gropius Master Artist in July and will present an exhibit of her work from May 8 through Aug. 1, 2021.

Drenk will discuss her work in a free public presentation at HMA on July 22, 2021, at 7 p.m. Drenk will present a workshop titled “The Altered Book: Repurposing Old Books as a Catalyst for Creativity” from July 23-25.

Transmutations at Galleri Urbane 2020

Returning for her first solo exhibition with Galleri Urbane since 2017, Jessica Drenk presents a highly-anticipated range of sculptural artworks in Transmutations.

The exhibition is the gallery’s largest solo show of the year, situated across both of its front exhibition spaces. Known and sought after for her compelling transformations that make use of common materials like books, pencils, and PVC pipes, Drenk’s newest body of work continues to push the boundaries of her creative practice. The artist utilizes a number of new methods and materials that are being exhibited for the first time, furthering her fascinating ability to blur the boundary between the man-made and the natural. 

Drenk’s practice is a dedicated investigation into materials. Employing a process-based approach, the artist sets out to cultivate the hidden potential within numerous commonplace, often-overlooked objects. “If it can be torn, cut, hardened, or softened, these are processes I will try,” states Drenk. The result of these processes is a range of complex objects that harken to formations found in nature. Drenk’s long-standing use of books as a raw material continues in Transmutations, revisiting select previous series and introducing new ones. On view is the largest Cerebral Mapping work yet to be displayed at Galleri Urbane: an 11-foot-tall weaving network of wax-covered book spines. Drenk’s new Compression series reimagines the same materials in a contained, densely-arranged manner that is most dramatically displayed in a trio of 7-foot-tall panels. The artist’s Circulation works are also revisited. Book pages are arranged in concentric layers that mimic a cross section of a tree trunk, positing an object that nods to the raw material’s original source.

“My work is an inquiry into materiality: what makes up the objects that surround us as well as the composition of the natural world. I am interested in how parts combine to create a whole and the intricacies of shape and texture found in the world on every scale. In treating everyday objects as raw material to sculpt, I practice a form of conceptual alchemy: through physically manipulating these objects their meanings become transmuted. Each piece is a direct response to material—a subversion of the meanings associated with it, and a reference to the life cycle of objects through time.” -Jessica Drenk

Fascinating additions to the artists oeuvre are also found in the exhibition. Scrap pieces of plywood are repurposed and altered through intricate relief carving in the Countour series, impressively transforming the humble material. Q-tips coated in plaster branch out in crystal-like formations found in the sprawling floor installation Dendrite. Stacked, compressed, and carved junk mail take on the layered appearance of tectonic formations in various Aggregate works. Our brief interaction with the disposable medium is ultimately contrasted with the geologic time scale of rock formations in these intricate wall sculptures that beckon for closer inspection.

Regeneration at Cynthia Reeves Gallery

My show at Cynthia Reeves Gallery's Mass MoCA space has been up for two months and is coming down soon.  Fortunately, many of the works will be seen again at the gallery's Walpole, New Hampshire location in March!  

The show entrance with Circulation, made of book pages and wax.

A unique installation for the show, Dendrite, is made of q-tips gathered together and covered in plaster.  The installation covered 22 feet of the gallery floorspace.

Dendrite: q-tips and plaster (floor), Speleothem: pencils (hanging), and Bibliophylum: books and wax (wall).

Dendrite, detail.  Plaster covered q-tips, 22 feet long.

Installing at Cynthia Reeves Gallery

We've been working hard at Cynthia Reeves Gallery to put together my first show with the gallery, Regeneration.  Opening tomorrow!

States of Matter in Dallas

States of Matter, my 4th solo show with Galleri Urbane in Dallas is open until the end of December, and features new work and new series.  Here are a few overall shots of the show.

States of Matter includes a 16 foot long shelf with Reading Our Remains book sculptures, and wall pieces (left to right) Circulation formed from strips of books and wax, Colony, made of pencils, and Cirripedia, an installation of book pages and plaster.

A new piece from the Wave series and the latest marble sculptures from the Immutable Ice series.

Reading Our Remains pieces made of altered books

side view of Colony (pencils) with Cirripedia (encyclopedia pages and plaster)

Immutable Ice (marble) pieces

Interview in Drain Magazine

Drain magazine's latest edition includes an interview conducted by art historian Dr. Astarte Rowe, who also curated an exhibit I participated in last year in Toronto.  

http://drainmag.com/biomorphic-aesthetics-and-the-crystallization-of-process-over-eidos-an-interview-with-jessica-drenk/

Dr. Rowe asked some good questions about my work and process, though I must admit I needed to re-read several of them before answering due to my inferior vocabulary... "chthonic" anyone?  

I like that she compares my pencil Implements sculpture to a microscopic amoeba, Mediolus corona... 

Carving Marble in Colorado

I recently returned from a marble carving symposium in the mountains of Colorado-- a town named Marble, Colorado in fact!  It is so wonderful to be able to create sculpture in such an inspirationally beautiful landscape, and gratifying to be able to turn a piece of stone into something resembling a sculpture in just one week.  Here are some photos of the pieces in progress, soon they will be shipped to my studio for finishing and then to Galleri Urbane in Dallas for my solo show in October.  

This stone was about 3 feet long and 300 lbs to begin with.

Initially stone is removed in large chunks by cutting through the marble with a diamond wheel on a grinder.

At work and enjoying it!

Slowly the shape emerges.  

My other piece, this one about 18" tall.  

These pieces, once finished, will be a part of the Immutable Ice series: pieces inspired by melting glacial ice forms, now made permanent in stone.  

Recently Collected

I've recently received photos of two pieces that have found homes in Europe, and I love seeing how the work has been displayed.  

Wave is looking striking against a concrete wall in Switzerland:

And a carved book has been beautifully displayed by a collector in Belgium:

Thanks to both collectors for allowing me to share these photos!

The Macallan Commission

In 2016 I created a commissioned piece for The Macallan scotch distillery in Scotland.  They sent me one of their oak casks, and I turned it into this outdoor sculpture for the distillery grounds.  The beautiful thing about the cask staves was their coloration: beautiful oak wood, charred to black on the inside (the charring imparts extra flavor to the scotch as it ages).  I tried to highlight the beauty and history of the wood, featuring the idea of the inside and outside of the barrel.  The piece is 7 feet tall.

Exhibition: Matters at Hand

Matters at Hand, a show at Heather Gaudio Fine Art in New Canaan, Connecticut opened last week, and I'm very proud to be a part of it.  Each of the artists involved created works of great detail, beauty, and sensitivity to materials-- my work felt right at home. 

The gallery is a lovely space for this group of work.  Here, left to right are: Jessica Drenk book sculptures Bibliophylum and Spine, Peagan Brooke's paintings, hanging sculptures made of pins by Beth Dary, and Jessica Drenk PVC pipe piece, Erosions.

Left to right: Jessica Drenk's PVC pipe sculpture, a beautiful hand coiled porcelain ceramic sculpture by Cheryl Ann Thomas, Beth Dary's hanging pieces, and a large piece by printmaker Sarah Amos.

Jessica Drenk: Wave 7, with Cheryl Ann Thomas: Pure

Review of Inherent Intent

The Denver show, Inherent Intent at Walker Fine Art, has received a positive review!  

Read the review, by Michael Paglia of Westword here

Looking Ahead: Miami in December

This fall I will be working hard to prepare work for Adah Rose Gallery's booth at PULSE Contemporary Art Fair in Miami Beach.  The fair has just announced their chosen exhibitors and we are excited to be showing alongside an amazing selection of galleries and artists- check out the full list here.

This will be a solo booth for me, and I am incredibly honored by the opportunity Adah Rose is giving me.  We have been showing together for 5 years and this is the 5th year in a row she has presented my work in Miami!

Opening night in Denver

It's a little meta, but I liked this moment of my latest art opening.   

I was at Walker Fine Art in Denver last week installing this new piece from my Cerebral Mapping series.  It is tall-- 11 feet tall-- and the first piece from the series with a vertical orientation.  It looks great in the beautiful gallery.

Opening night of Inherent Intent at Walker Fine Art in Denver, September 2016.
Artwork: Cerebral Mapping, by Jessica Drenk, made of books and wax.

detail of Cerebral Mapping: books and wax.  Artist: Jessica Drenk, 2016

Cerebral Mapping: books and wax.  Artist: Jessica Drenk, 2016  Gallery: Walker Fine Art in Denver

Exhibition: St. Petersburg, FL

August 26th-October 22nd, 2016
Florida CraftArts Gallery

Opening Reception, Friday, Aug 26th
5:30-8:30

Curated by Jorge Vidal

Since our beginnings, wood and fiber have fueled our development by fillingbasic needs. With these needs met, artists look for new ways to manipulate materials. There is artistry in problem solving!

In “Mind Over Matter”, these materials and methods are advanced in unexpected ways by artists Dona Anderson, Emily Barletta, Erik and Martin Demaine, Jessica Drenk, Lisa Kokin, Christopher Kurtz, Polly Adams Sutton.