Jeanne Silverthorne facts for kids

Jeanne Silverthorne (born 1950) is an American sculptor. She is famous for making sculptures and art installations out of cast rubber. Her art often explores her own art studio, seeing it as a way to think about the human body, our minds, and even death.

Silverthorne became well-known in New York City in the 1990s. She was part of a group of artists who used unusual materials. They wanted to create art that felt more personal and handmade, unlike the very simple, often cold, art style called Minimalism. She sees her studio as a place to dig into and understand. One critic said she looks at "deeply melancholic realms, enlivened by the occasional mordant joke." This means her art can be a bit sad but also has funny parts.

Jeanne Silverthorne, Pneuma Machine (in daylight and glowing in the dark), kinetic rubber sculpture, dimensions variable, 2005.

Jeanne Silverthorne has won important awards like a Guggenheim Fellowship. Her art is displayed in famous museums, including the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. She has shown her work all over the world. Since 1993, she has also taught art at the School of Visual Arts in New York.

Becoming an Artist

Jeanne Silverthorne was born in 1950 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She studied at Temple University and later at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. For many years, she lived and worked in both New York City and Philadelphia. She made sculptures, showed her art, taught, and even wrote reviews about art and movies. In 1988, she moved to New York permanently.

Her early sculptures often mixed ideas about the human body and everyday objects with how materials feel and look. She made sculptures of things like fake body parts. She also made piles of rubber ribbons that looked like tangled toys, calling them "DNA sculptures." These works were often described as anti-heroic and a bit funny. One critic said they looked like "small catastrophes that have just walked out of a cartoon."

The Artist's Studio as Art

In the early 1990s, Silverthorne started focusing on her art studio itself. She saw it as an old, almost ruined place. She looked at its old tools, leftover bits, and even herself as the artist. She used cast rubber, which has a soft, dull look, and played with size. She made tiny things huge or huge things tiny. This made ordinary studio items look absurd, useless, or even a bit creepy.

Jeanne Silverthorne, Untitled (Chandelier), rubber, dimensions variable, 1995.

Her art explored ideas about the human body, how artists create, and how things decay. It also questioned old ideas about art, like who owns an idea or if art can last forever. Critics often found her exhibitions humorous and sprawling. Her sculptures sometimes looked like Rube Goldberg machines or strange organisms. They were often connected by rubber wires and tubes, like drawings in space.

For example, in 1994, she showed a giant, non-working chandelier made of rubber. It hung at eye-level, making it look strange and out of place. Another show in 1997 was called "good creepy fun." It made everyday objects seem alive and useful things seem broken.

In later shows, Silverthorne used tiny rubber pieces that looked like packing peanuts. She turned them into large black sculptures. One famous installation was called The Studio Stripped Bare, Again. It had long black electrical cords hanging from the ceiling and spilling onto the floor. They led to a grey rubber light bulb hanging over two tiny rubber pieces under a magnifying glass. This light bulb, which usually means a new idea, was seen as "an imploded metaphor of modern genius" – like a light that can't turn on, showing that old ideas might be running out.

Skin and Machine Sculptures

In the late 1990s, Silverthorne also made sculptures that looked like magnified views of human skin or glands. These were framed in fancy black rubber frames. These works clearly showed her idea of the studio as a body. Their swirling patterns and bumps made the body look strange and alien. Critics said they looked like weird alien landscapes or giant, crazy Victorian pictures.

Later, she made these "skin" sculptures represent emotions. She connected them to machine-like parts. For example, Fear Machine and Tear Machine (2002) linked sculptures like Dry Mouth and Aching to "emotional engines" with cords and switches. These machines were described as both beautiful and monstrous.

She also made sculptures of flowers, like Knothole (2011). Her 2008 show featured blue, white, and pink rubber flowers with dead-black frames. They had rubber bees, ladybugs, and flies on them. This showed how life and decay can exist together. Her 2013 show explored the idea of vanitas, which is about how life and beauty don't last forever.

Rubber People and DNA Art

In the early 2000s, Silverthorne started adding tiny (less than a foot tall) self-portraits to her shows. These were not heroic or grand. One show had two identical rubber figures of herself, one with red hair and one with gray. They were sitting with their knees pulled up.

Jeanne Silverthorne, Jeanne (Up and Down), rubber and phosphorescent pigment, 9" high, 2008.

She also made portraits of her family and friends using glowing rubber. These sculptures sometimes included real hair from the person. They also had DNA reports that showed a person's genetic history. Mixing human hair with industrial rubber brought up ideas about how fragile we are, how bodies decay, and how long things last. It also showed the difference between being unique and being copied.

Recent Exhibitions

Silverthorne's more recent shows have brought together many of her past ideas. They are often deep, sometimes a bit dark, but also funny. She adds new things like moving parts, small story scenes, and even rubber caterpillars. Her 2008 show included Untitled (Bad Ideas), a trash bin overflowing with rubber light bulbs. Another piece was Pneuma Machine (2005), a moving sculpture of small rubber appliances that would shake and come to life.

Her exhibition “Down the Hole and Into the Grain” (2014) had fifty sculptures of office items. These included actual-size chairs, desks, computers, and light bulbs. But they were mixed with giant pencils, caterpillars, and flies, and tiny people and skeletons. In her 2019 show, Silverthorne used ideas from the book Frankenstein. She explored the artist's role in creating something that might take on a life of its own. The show included a sculpture called Frankenstein, which was a glowing book with invisible ink text that could be seen with UV light.

In 2021, Silverthorne worked with artist Bonnie Rychlak on an exhibition called Down and Dirty. This show explored how both artists use humor to talk about tough topics.

Awards and Collections

Jeanne Silverthorne has received many important awards. These include the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship in 2017 and the Joan Mitchell Foundation Award in 2010. She also received an Anonymous Was A Woman Award in 1996, which was the first year that award was given out.

Her art is part of the collections of many public museums. Some of these include the Museum of Modern Art, the San Francisco Museum of Art, and the Whitney Museum. Her work is also in museums in France and Korea.

Other Sources

• Flynn, Tom. The Body in Three Dimensions, New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1998.
• Isaak, Jo Anna. Feminism and Contemporary Art, New York: Routledge, 1996.
• Seigel, Jeanne. "Eva Hesse’s Influence Today? Conversations with Three Contemporary Artists," Art Journal, Summer, 2004, p. 72–88.
• Von Hardenberg, Irene. Im Atelier, Gerstenberg Verlag, 2005.