About

Jordan Buschur’s paintings focus on collections of objects ranging from stacked books to interiors of drawers, all united by a system of value based on mystery, sentimentality, and a matriarchal connection. Buschur received a B.A. in Studio Art from Goshen College (Goshen, IN) and an M.F.A. in Painting from Brooklyn College, the City University of New York. Her work has been shown in numerous locations, including exhibitions with the Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts (Grand Rapids, MI), River House Arts (Toledo, OH), the Center for Book Arts (NYC), and Field Projects (NYC). She participated in residencies at the Wassaic Project, Chashama North, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, and the Vermont Studio Center, as well as teaching residencies through the Bemis Center for Contemporary Art and the Sheldon Museum of Art. Awards include the Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award, the Kimmel Foundation Artist Award and the Charles Shaw Painting Award. Her work has been featured in print in New American Paintings and UPPERCASE Magazine, and online on The Jealous Curator, Young Space, and BOOOOOOOM, among others. Podcast interviews include I Like Your Work and Studio Break. She is a co-founder of Co-Worker Gallery and has curated exhibitions at Cuchifritos Gallery (NYC), Spring/Break Art Show (NYC), and the Neon Heater (Findlay, OH). Buschur has taught art to all ages and currently teaches drawing at the University of Toledo.

Statement
My paintings imply a human presence through depictions of accumulated collections. Contents of desk drawers, stacks of books, packed boxes, and objects on display, are united by systems of value shaped by mystery, sentimentality, and the matriarchal connection.

Each painting focuses on the oscillation between personal resonance and public view, reality and invention, fixed meaning and open interpretation. I’m interested in the assignment of non-monetary significance onto objects as an inherently interior and idiosyncratic act. In this way, the paintings are portraits as I meditate on the details (both mundane and magical) of the accumulated stuff of friends and family. Simultaneously, the collections point towards the material weight of modern life, the anxiety of consumption, and the endgame of anonymous personal effects. Looking through the lens of inheritance, accumulations of sentimental objects can link to ancestors, while also becoming a burden of junk. A well loved thing, so deeply felt by one, shapeshifts in meaning when passed to a new owner and generation.

Books have the potential to contain anything- how-to guides, secrets, romances, theories. They remain closed: an impenetrable façade, or conversely, a blank slate open to any interpretation. When text is present, it is both invented and extracted from the original text on the books. These small groups of words function as short poems, offering hints at the content of the books and steering the painting towards additional meanings. Mirrors are present in some paintings, though the doubled images are never true duplicates. The text changes, perspectives and colors shift, and the divide between real and reflected widens.

The urge to keep materializes in many ways. What is useful? What is potentially useful at an unknown future date? What is sentimental and how do feelings transfer onto objects? What identity is projected into the world through a carefully arranged collection? What stories are withheld, hidden beneath the object’s surface?