Studio Visit with Artist Jacqueline Ott - Inside Art with Michael Rose

Studio Visit with Artist Jacqueline Ott - Inside Art with Michael Rose

 

Few artists in Rhode Island have a resume as lengthy and as decorated as Jacqueline Ott. With works in important collections and a long exhibition track record, Ott is an active maker whose focus is on producing finely crafted artworks that hinge on carefully selected tones and patterns. In the works produced in her local studio, viewers can find new and exciting ways to see form and color.

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Ott was born to blue-collar parents and earned her BFA at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. Asked how her mother and father felt about her pursuing education in the arts, she says they were supportive because they recognized the unique sway artmaking held over her. After her time in Philly, she relocated to Rhode Island to attend graduate school at RISD and has been in the state ever since. Formerly working in sculpture, Ott notes that she primarily focuses on two-dimensional works because of their enhanced flexibility. She can manipulate substrates like paper and panel to manufacture artworks that resonate with her vision.

 

 

 

 

Asked what she has enjoyed most about creating an art career in Rhode Island, Ott looks to the state’s small size as an asset. She says, “It’s easy to get around - I can hop in the car and drive to the art supply store instead of lugging supplies on the subway back to my studio.”

 

At her studio in a high-ceiling mill on the Providence-Pawtucket line, Ott regularly works to create new paintings that examine her deeply-held interests like pattern, time, and color. She has been working in the same space for over twenty years and her small array of creative tools includes expected things like brushes, palette knives, alongside straight edges, a well-used protractor, and a heat gun. As far as studios go, Ott’s is immaculately neat and tidy, a compliment to her precise artworks.

 

 

 

 

Speaking of the patterns that recur in her work and her strategy for making art, Ott says, “Developing and working within a system is intellectually stimulating, encourages experimentation, and helps me explore ideas and processes in a structured way.” Looking at the artist’s work, viewers will find that she returns to ideas, to shapes, and to strategies again and again until she has fully explored them. Later bodies of work sometimes use earlier ones as inspirations, too.

 

Ott’s artistic activities have been wide-ranging. She was in the inaugural cohort of the popular art documentary series NetWorksRI when it premiered in 2008. She has shown her work in numerous galleries across the region, including beloved former venues like Lenore Gray Gallery and 5 Traverse Gallery. In 2021, she shared an impressive collection of space-spanning works in the Jamestown Arts Center exhibition Scaling the Wall alongside Allison Paschke.

 

 

 

 

Coming up in the fall, Ott will be the subject of a two-person show with fellow Rhode Island artist Tayo Heuser at Chazan Gallery at Wheeler School. She is currently creating the new works that will be shared in this exhibition, which promises to be an exciting one.

 

A respected artist, Ott has earned grants from the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts and the National Endowments for the Arts. She has rounded out her career in the studio with stints teaching students their craft. This has included appointments at Brown, Roger Williams University, and RISD.

 

 

 

 

Ott’s works have also found their ways into collections of notable institutions like the RISD Museum, the Newport Art Museum, the Smithsonian, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. During a recent visit to her workspace, Ott shared one of her handmade books from a series of three titled “Ping Pong”. Of the three books, one is now in an important private collection, the second is owned by the MFA, and the third remains with the artist. In the pages of this book, Ott’s core ideas play out in small drawings that employ varying color arrangements that make readers look twice.

 

Ott’s artworks are highly conceptual and leverage intricate and layered design to evoke underlying structures and patterns. They invite viewers in to look closer, to consider color relationships, or space, or time. Asked what she hopes visitors take away from her art, Ott puts it simply, saying, “I hope viewers find the work engaging.”

 

 

 

 

Ott’s works are indeed engaging, and her rightly celebrated oeuvre continues to take shape in fascinating new works continually produced in her Rhode Island studio.

 

Learn more about Jacqueline Ott at her website www.jacquelineott.com and follow her on Instagram at @jac.que.line.ott.