- By Kelly B. Tehan
- Entertainment
Print 
Born in Toronto, Ontario, Jennifer Pepper is a sculptor and installation artist currently on the art faculty at Cazenovia College. Professor Pepper's work focuses on the connections between language and the physical world. She has exhibited nationally and internationally in solo exhibitions and has participated in over fifty group shows since 1990. Her work has been seen in a variety of venues, including museums and galleries in Ireland, Japan, Canada, New York City and other locations throughout the United States.
In her artist statement, Ms. Pepper says of her Wells College installation: "I make use of found objects and dislocate them from their original cultural frames. By stripping the material from one context and incorporating it into another, the object has the potential to be complex, alive, available, and audience-activated. In new configurations, an object, word, idea, or meaning embraces endless options ... These varied perceptions illuminate the very nature in which language functions when the activity of perception [and] interpretation and the process of translation are critically examined. ... My drawings are active, contrasting hues and visual vibrations that infer the physical and malleable quality language continually reveals. The use of fragmented sentences from philosophy [and] everyday life and art presents language in an elusive manner, inferring its buoyant and transformational qualities. ... In my works, I attempt to bring forth the temporal attributes language offers as it articulates and names our world."
Ms. Pepper is the recipient of a number of granted awards, including The National Endowment for the Humanities, New York State Council on the Arts, New York State Foundation for the Arts, Astraea National Visual Artist fellow (NYC), and The Constance Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts. She was a guest panelist at the 2007 Women's Studies annual conference at Middle Tennessee State University where she presented a paper entitled The Latent Image: Performing Identity. She also presented Digital Flickerings & Femme Technology at the 2005 conference.
Ms. Pepper received her B.F.A. from The Maryland Institute College of Art in 1987, and her M.F.A. from the University of Connecticut in 1989.
The String Room Gallery is located in Main Building. Hours are Monday through Friday from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., Wednesday evenings from 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday from 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.
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