Jennifer Brazelton

Artist Bio

Jennifer was born and raised in the Arizona desert, by Midwestern parents, who kept their family grounded with a mixture of hard work and ingenuity. Jennifer’s father, a construction worker with a passion for building custom cars and airplanes, taught Jennifer that creativity could lead to sustaining life choices.  Jennifer’s mother, an art therapist and stay at home mom filled their days with the popular art media of the 1970’s and an endless a cycle of new and imaginative methods of expression. 

These early influences, using visual art as a way of channeling feelings, remain an important part of Jennifer’s art practice. The beauty and excitement of the flow of ideas from the unconscious mind to the conscious is an important catalyst for her present work.  She endeavors to embrace the uncomfortable and the unknown.  The contradictions of the world around her are expressed in the interconnectedness of her sculptural gestures.  

Another early passion for Jennifer was travel. As a travel agent she journeyed to as many places as she could, both near and far.  Long airline flights to destinations such as, Thailand, Indonesia, Micronesia, Laos, Turkey, and Hong Kong provided inspiration in the ever changing landscapes below her window seat.  The connections, shapes, and colors, layered themselves over each other.  Rivers and roads became branching trees, human veins, and knots of rope.  These remote scenes from distant lands merged in her imagination with the desert landscapes of her youth and became the inspirations for her sculptural abstractions.

Though traveling was a quest, it did not sustain Jennifer’s innately creative side.  Her many experiences in distant places led her to San Francisco where she went back to school to finish her degree.  She continued her art practice with an MFA from San Francisco State University with an emphasis in ceramic art.  The graduate school methods and conceptual ideas were inspiring, but contrary to her own artistic process.  She continues to fight “over thinking”, and believes that tapping into the unconscious is where the concepts for her strongest work originates.

Jennifer lives in San Francisco with her husband and has her studio at Dome Studios in Oakland, CA.  She teaches college level art courses at California State University East Bay, Merritt College, Skyline College, and adult art education at the Richmond Art Center and the National Institute for Artists with Disabilities. She was an invited artist at the first annual Ceramics Annual of America, in San Francisco.  Her work is represented in the Lark Books publication “500 Raku Pieces”, in a public art installation in Argentina, and by Xanadu Gallery in Scottsdale, AZ.