I've been working on this for hours...damnit...

Often referencing the unexplainable, the work of Jamie Uretsky feeds off of ambiguity and simulations opposites. “Driving back and forth from northern and southern California…something a co-worker once said to me…creatures of the outer bay, and I guess outer space…so then angels I suppose…and oh! Sparkle cake,” was the response Uretsky give when asked about her recent work entitled Something Jauana Said. When inquired as to what the piece was actually about Uretsky seemed to go cross-eyed for a moment and then responded with a shrug. Uretsky scratched her head under her cap then glanced at me over her glasses, “I can only assume what you want me to say, so I will say that first. I’ll get all the pretty art book language out first so it is out and I can really tell you how I feel or perhaps I’ll tell you how I feel first since now you know that I am irritated. Each piece can be considered to be about different things. For example, I Put Her on the Shelf was about me watching my friend die. The Plane’s On Fire! The Plane is Paper is about being twenty-one and crumbling foundations. But Something Jauana Said and Untitled were different. They too were about things, lots of things like I mentioned before. Sparkle cake, sexual frustration, conversations I’ve had, jellyfish, ska music, ect…so..while the work is about those things, I would like to think of my work as more of a response to those things. These visual landscapes, the curving, twisting, organic, planes are my visual output. This is vague so let me try to explain. Let’s say for a moment you are trying to remember something…you are in the middle of retelling a joke that you think is hilarious…and you’re telling it to someone of the opposite sex in hopes that they too will find it funny and you to can laugh yourselves off into the sunset. Well the punch line, the kicker comes along, and you’ve got nothing. You’re memory fails. Your prospective date retreats and you end up in the shower three weeks later attempting to recall the last time you saw Kirstie Alley look good…khan…BAM! you remember the punch line. Now take yourself out of that story for a moment and try to explain that to me visually. What the feelings look like. What the smells look like, all the thoughts, the insecurities, the dreams, what the passing of time looked like. All I am doing in my work is making abstract visual responses to the mundane. In a way, a piece such as Something Jauana Said is highly narrative, my language is just different. For the language I am interested in, when it comes to sharing my stories, is not language that will get viewers to a place of understanding or experiencing my metanarrative but rather the strange, missed, perhaps…tossed aside utterances of language that will aid the viewer in relating to something they cannot describe fully but feel as if they 'know'. When the viewer sees my work it is not as if the work sends them to a particular memory but rather a place of memory. Visually I try to make this possible by using repetition. I once heard an artist call repetition her “visual prayer”. I like this; it makes my work seem more important then it is. The viewer’s memories could also be tickled by my choice of materials. I use the word choice lightly…because if I had my way I would like to be a painter, photographer, or a comic book artist…but I think I respect those sorts of people way too much to ever attempt to be one. That’s not to say 3rd and 4th dimension artists don’t hold my high regard, oh they do. I somehow fell into my nitch of building/crafting shit and now I cannot stop (the words ‘can't stop’ I don’t use lightly).”

With this Uretsky seemed to begin to stand as if she had other places to be. Knowing of her inability to let people down and her complete lack of backbone I pushed her more to talk about her materials. “Well, I tend to work in systems. I often joke about my work, claiming that it is just a bunch of little shit glued together to make bigger shit…”

“ahh yess.” I agreed.

“Yeah, well I’ve found it tends to be more then that,” Uretsky continued, “My work creates itself out of systems. For example the system for The Plane’s On Fire! The Plane is Paper was cut the paper, fold the paper into a tiny plane, separate the string, glue the plane to individual string, dip individual plane into paint, let dry, glue plane chunks to main sculpture. I never know how a piece will end up. The work itself knows and it tells me, more often then not it wont speak to me at all or it will just screech at me ‘I’m not working! I’m not working and by the way you suck and I hate you!’ but there are moments...sweet moments when I’ll get a whisper that will say glue me here, or bend it this way, or keep going, or use wood glue because it's yellow. I should mention that I do use glue a lot. I use it for the same reasons a painter would use paint I suppose, it is their best way to make the piece. When I want to make a piece that will take a video, or dancing, or 5,000 leather batman masks then I will, but for now I am using glue…and glue has been quite faithful.”

With this it seemed that Uretsky didn’t want to talk anymore so I asked another question, “is it true that you have very little feeling in your fingertips because of all the hotglue burns you’ve endured?”

“Yeah, uh sort of…well no, not really. I just like to say shit like that. I just know when the glue is ok to touch. I have been burned pretty bad before.”

“Really?!”

“No, not really.”

“So what of your performance/video work?” With this question Jamie chuckled and then got kind of crazy excited, then got quiet again. So I probed, “What are some of your inspirations for your performance/video work?”

“Devo.”

“The band?”

“You’re interview is falling apart. You know that. I mean you this whole article is not very interesting not to mention your opening statement is…offensive. It’s sounds as though I’m painting sets for the X-files.”

“Well, I think it works it says everything you said in a sentence rather then a whole paragraph of fragmented sentences and a pointless story that you threw in just to use a khan reference.”

“Jamie, you shouldn’t write when you’re hungry.”