Jo Locke

Jo Locke [b. Louisville, Kentucky (she/they)] received a Bachelor of Arts in Studio Art and Sociology from Hope College in Holland, Michigan. Jo is an interdisciplinary artist with a concentration in Sculptural Collage based in Brooklyn, NY. Their work has been shown globally from Florence, Italy to Seoul, South Korea. Growing up with their father working for Habitat for Humanity, Jo grew a sense of importance tied to human-built-space. Between the dance studio and the print shop, Jo has observed the power of community in arts spaces. Their work seeks to understand the social systems Americans engage in that are propelling us towards isolated spaces. Jo is particularly interested in how memory and emotion is tied to human- built-space and how this connection interacts with our social selves. Through research on what Jo calls the Illusion of Progress, she is seeking to make use of art's ability to intervene in our taken-for-granted realities and question our social systems on a global scale. Jo has received awards including the Kentucky Governor's School for the Art’s Toyota Alumni Fund, Borgeson Scholars Grant, and the Herman Miller Art Award. She has participated in residencies including the New York Arts Program, the Print Art Research Center and Chautauqua Insitute's 6-week artist’s Residency Program.

 

Illusion of Progress

The mechanical chaos of my optical collages are created through a series of modular steps which work to continuously explore our Illusion of Progress: 

  1. Painfully withdraw from the addictive urge to consume copious amounts of entertaining out-of-context information.

  2. Attempt to catalog the information existing within the subconscious by slowing down. Take a walk, meditate, or grain a lithography stone for 6 hours. 

  3. Find time for reflection so you may identify spaces and experiences of emotional impact. For me, this often comes in the iterative reality of material exploration and play in my creative practice.

  4. Use your identified spaces and experiences to draw conclusions about your purpose and Truth and therefore your vocation.

  5. Compare your modes of production to your vocation. Analyze how your valuable time is being spent. How does society constrain you from embracing your Vocation? 

Steps must be completed with intentionality and autonomy. Completing these steps will permit the individual to analyze the illusion of progress as it exists in their life, however withdrawing from media in contemporary society is no easy feat. This work encourages the viewer to seek exploration of the in-between that exists only when the individual priorities alternative forms within the context our productionally progressing society.