Jessica Jackson Hutchins: Wrecked and Righteous

Photo: Mario Gallucci

Jessica Jackson Hutchins (born in 1971 in Chicago) has explored the relationship between art and everyday life for nearly thirty years, playfully melding materials with an unruly, intuitive approach to traditional mediums and found objects alike. Based in Portland, Oregon, Hutchins gained international recognition for her expressive sculptural assemblages that combine cast-off household items with handmade ceramic and papier-mâché elements. Recently, she expanded her artistic practice to include fused glass, producing vibrant, collage-like panels and windows that bring a form associated with exalted spiritual spaces into the secular realm. Wrecked and Righteous is the most extensive overview of Hutchins’s practice to date and includes works created since the late 1990s.

Wishlist, 2015

Sofa, mixed-media collage, resin, plaster, glazed ceramic. Sofa: 28 x 92 x 36

in.; wall: 61 x 85 x 9 in. Installation view of Jessica Jackson Hutchins: Wrecked and Righteous, Frye Art Museum,

Seattle, January 27–May 5, 2024. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Jueqian Fang

From left: Lascaux Reprise, 2012/2018. Glazed ceramic, upholstered chair, leather, fabric.

45 x 40 x 59 in. Courtesy of the artist and Adams and Ollman, Portland. Third Eye, 2015. Acrylic paint, collage,

fabric, ceramic, chair. 56 x 47 1/2 x 6 in. Courtesy of the artist.

 From left: Rope Stanza, 2013. Ladder, canvas, acrylic paint, glazed ceramic, macramé

hanger. 79 1/2 x 102 1/2 x 59 in. Miller Meigs Collection. Berliner Haus, 2012. Ladder, canvas, pastel, acrylic paint,

photocopies, glazed ceramic. 88 2/3 x 78 7/8 x 82 2/3 in. Courtesy of the artist.

Shadow Swing (detail), 2024.

Fused and leaded glass. 287 1/4 x 19 1/2 in. Commissioned

by the Frye Art Museum; courtesy of the artist. Photo: Jueqian Fang

And then we were married, 2020.

Glazed ceramic. 35 x 22 x 24 in. Miller Meigs Collection. Photo: Mario Gallucci

Undercurrents, 2023.

Papier-mâché, oil crayon, and paint on monoprint on linen and

canvas. 78 3/4 x 78 3/4 x 1 3/4 in. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Mario Gallucci

Installation view of Jessica Jackson Hutchins: Wrecked and Righteous, Frye Art Museum, Seattle, January 27–May 5, 2024. Photo: Jueqian Fang

The nonchronological presentation surveys the artist’s pursuit of immediacy and communion through art, beginning in the museum’s rotunda entryway with a site-specific fused-glass window. Within the galleries, Hutchins’s relief paintings, intimate tabletop objects, and

needlepoint compositions mingle with selected furniture sculptures— well-worn sofas and chairs cradling lumpy ceramic forms that read as surrogates for the human body.

My Friend the Poet, 2019. Ceramic, plaster, papier-mâché, collage, chair. 63 x 30 x 33 in. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Mario Gallucci

Designed as wearable serving platters and bowls, the large, fitted food vessels in the adjacent room rest in armchairs until activated by performers during a special onetime event. The exhibition links these unwieldy prostheses to the artist’s early milagros (miracles) sculptures: papier-mâché body parts created to symbolically heal suffering people she knew or followed in the media. Drawing a thorough line of vulnerability, caring, and repair between these poles of Hutchins’s career, the exhibition honors her unique capacity for finding the sublime in ordinary places and neglected things.

Jessica Jackson Hutchins: Wrecked and Righteous is organized by Amanda Donnan, Chief Curator and Director of Exhibitions.

Lead support is provided by The Ford Family Foundation, administered by the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art.

Additional generous support was provided by the Frye Foundation and Frye Members. Media sponsorship provided by KEXP.

Third Eye, 2015. Acrylic paint, collage, fabric, ceramic, chair. 56 x 47 1/2 x 6 in. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Mario Gallucci

This exhibit opened on Nov. 11, 2023 and will conclude on March 10, 2024. Please visit their website here for more information about this exhibition and others at the Frye Museum. The museum can also be found on Facebook, Youtube, and Instagram.