Jade Hoyer

The Mercy of Events

Artist statement

The author Margaret Atwood writes of a character who “knows herself to be at the

mercy of events.” In spite of, or perhaps because of, the currents of fate carrying us, we

steadfastly maintain the schemes that represent our quest for order. Using watercolor

and collage, this exhibition, “The Mercy of Events” engages with optical color mixing,

grids, and graph paper to play with and undermine visual organizational methods.

The imagery for this show is inspired by Lake Michigan. During the throes of COVID-19

in 2020, I stood (six feet apart from the nearest other human) on the shore of Lake

Michigan. Experiencing events that felt much, much larger than myself, I took in the

sight, sound, and movement of one of world’s greatest bodies of fresh water. For “The

Mercy of Events,” I create a large-scale portrait of Lake Michigan with graph paper,

assembling an image of 90,000 circles in watercolor, and using lake water for the paint.

This exhibition is an exercise in contrasts: a representation inspired by graph paper,

Georges Serurat’s pointillist works (and efforts to systematically portray imagery with

unadulterated dots of color), the perverse standardized tests of my childhood, and also

a depiction of how we engage outside those models.

Ultimately, this work is about process, and processing. The resulting works are a playful

honoring of (and subversion of) visual order.

Biography:

Jade Hoyer (b. 1985, St. Louis, MO) is an artist whose practice engages social and

environmental narratives through media including printmaking, hand-papermaking,

social practice, and installation. Jade has been recognized by organizations including

the McKnight Foundation, the Windgate Foundation, the Minnesota State Arts Board,

the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America at Brown University, and the

Cultural Center of the Philippines. Her artwork is part of collections including the

Museum at Texas Tech University’s Artist Printmaker Research Collection, the

Association of Pinoy Printmakers, Philippines, and the Museu da Gravura de Curitiba,

Brazil. She earned her MFA in printmaking from the University of Tennessee-Knoxville,

and is an Assistant Professor of Art at Carleton College (MN). jadehoyer.com