An essay by Public Art Coordinator David Francis on Billie Goats Gruff from the 4th Floor Gallery exhibit at the Shoreline City Hall.
"The eerie, gothic world of Jody Joldersma’s work makes it easily recognizable and points to its uniqueness. It’s not just the hybrid creatures that compel the viewer’s gaze but the collaged background of photographs and found-image landscapes, the dog-eared, torn and wrinkled urban location in Billie Goats Gruff, for example, that work together in ensemble to convey the profound “disquietude,” as the poet Fernando Pessoa described the feeling. The green monsters here are residents of the forgotten space beneath the bridge; they haunt such ignored spaces and seem to defy any desire for their removal. In this sense, the artwork encourages associations with current social issues like homelessness and poverty; the green figures are essentially the dispossessed and disenfranchised, the outcasts whose lives we do not value. It’s not just an urban space that Joldersma is intent on exploring, however, as nature is also very much in focus. The two white goats on top of the viaduct are part of the way nature over-grows infrastructure and limits our efforts at control (“climate change” artistically rendered as “climate decay”); the branches beneath the bridge also add to this effect. Joldersma’s world of human oddities, circus freaks, and other rejected humanoids on the fringes of society becomes a celebration (rather than a sorrowful or regretful eulogy) of all that remains mysterious and unknown. In her search for found images and photographs to use as homes for her cartoon-like menagerie, Joldersma also references childhood and the power of an imagination that insists on going to bed with the light on because the monster under the bed is so vibrantly real."
More information
4th Floor Artwork
on loan from local artists
Nicole Brauch
Russ Glaser
Jody Joldersma
Savina Mason
Naoko Morisawa
The show runs from April 20th through June 5th