Candace Jensen

I am an interdisciplinary artist. I work in calligraphy and text-based work, as well as painting, drawing, printmaking, and writing. I also do letterpress printing, usually for poetry broadsides and prints of my calligraphy. I often combine approaches of drawing and calligraphy with letterpress, or writing by myself and others in my visual essays. Much of my work is rooted in explorations of deep ecology, which are environmental in nature, but also feature philosophy and spiritual connection to place. 

Emphasizing rewilding and re-enchanting text, my illuminations complicate communication by demanding material and aesthetic consideration of the message. I’m interested in human creative expression coexisting with other intelligences, and this allows the work to illuminate interrelatedness to other beings’ agency; mushroom beings, botanical beings, etc. The message is in the material and is written in the material, on the material. This is an investigation and refutation of nature/culture dualism through the lens of deep ecology and relationality that is grounded in the physical negotiation of image, matrix and media.

Primarily my work concerns itself with text as a visual medium, however I o­scillate between writing, visual art, somatic experiments and symposia collaborations (conversations, dialogues, round tables, salons, etc), which braid together in my studio practice and presentation of my work. Ultimately my work is alchemical, seeking to connect macro patterns (above) with intimate grief and more personal, local ecologies (below) through material. It is both art for art's sake, and artivism.