Lund, Jess

Though perhaps in bad fashion, I am commenting on my fellow grad-school colleague and friend's most recent piece. In her words, stolen without permission from her facebook, "This installation is based on a memory of New Years eve in 2007. Materials are hotel fabric, polyurethaned romance novels, varnished ramen noodles, solo cups, orange juice, spoons, cotton balls, film."

The installation is tiled with picnic blankets (sewn fabric) with little walking room between the blankets. Each blanket holds a grotesquely explosive romance novel with ramen noodles oozing from the figures of the novels' cover figure. Lund chose to be literal with some aspects of the piece (ramen was the food of choice/affordability for this memory) while alluding to drug use in less specific ways (only those experienced would pick up on the orange juice that enhances certain drugs injected and the presence of cotton is also for those in the know).

With my sheltered upbringing much of Lund's work thus far has puzzled me as the allusions completely bypass my level of understanding. Once the connections are explained, however, a new dimensionality is present in her work. The items she uses to refer to drug use would make sense to a current or former drug aficionado, but without the translation of the symbols, her work reaches me in much the same way as the Beat writers - I love it, but I don't have the slightest idea what it is about.

Since the induction of our graduate program Lund's aesthetic and work technique has intrigued me as well as drawn me in. Her use of found objects, haggard materials informs the deeply embedded meaning present in her pieces. With the new understanding of content her work examines drug use without reveling in it or condemning it. The future pieces guarantee

more insightful content. Lund tends to say "here it is" with her work. She hides nothing, but puts nothing in black and

white, either. The way in which she examines perceptions of 12 step programs, drug use, and memory evoke the way Lorna Simpson tells it like it is (or is it?) that necessitates a inward re-examination.