Driven by a need to experiment, Jay gathers discarded paper, material that usually passes through hands unnoticed, and transforms it into contemporary relics imbued with strangeness. What was once disposable becomes deliberate; what was overlooked is now held and examined. The work honors the act of making as a way of being in and connecting with the world. Each piece carries a quiet record of transformation, reflecting how our bodies, selves, and perspectives are reshaped over a lifetime.

 

The sculptures created for From the Center We Sing reference the body without fully depicting it. Hovering between abstraction and recognition, the forms never fully resolve into human shapes, suggesting something unknown or otherworldly. In that uncertainty, the work speaks to otherness, expansion, and the ongoing process of becoming.

 

Glass serves as both a support and a disruption, holding the paper in tension while creating spaces that feel like absences. These openings act as eyes, portals, or thresholds that invite shifts in perception. Transparency becomes a form of inquiry, and reflection becomes a way of asking how we see and how we are seen.

 

Every element is considered across multiple registers. The physical structure carries psychic resonance, allowing the fragile and the precise to coexist. The work moves from the material to the interior and outward again, tracing a continuum that encompasses the body, the unseen interior life, and the possibility of forms that exceed both.​

​​

Image:

Kobold, 2026

Paper, glass, epoxy clay, dye, pigment, glue. 

17 x 12 x 4.25 in.