Artist Spotlight: Jen O'Connor (Part II)

Jen O’Connor. Photo courtesy of CJ Sommerfeld

In our first chat with Vancouver-based artist Jen O’Connor, she dove into the series of events which initiated her purpose to integrate consumer waste into creative works. It all started with a rejection of what she’d been taught was the first step to making art: purchasing materials. After beginning to source items that were simply around, she was propelled into garbage sculpture and subsequently constructed a public stage where she hosted a TV show-formatted performance titled Trash Talk. 

Following her sculpture and TV show endeavours, O’Connor’s divergent uses for what society refers to as ‘single-use items’ and other discarded materials have evolved into a painting practice where she merges garbage with oil paints on canvas. In part-two of our conversation with O’Connor, she further elucidates on the confluence between her garbage works and consumer culture, as well as why she documents many of her pieces via film. 

AC: Your artist statement acknowledges that society's discarded materials—which you integrate into your works—hold embedded narratives of our consumer culture. Can you elaborate on the stories that pertain to the waste, and the greater narrative that comes together once waste materials are transformed on canvas?

JO: The narratives of consumer culture are embedded in a way that we do not notice them anymore. The most banal object, such as a can, is so commonplace that we take for granted the necessity of cans when there could be alternatives to single-use objects. 

Through the process of smelting the can, its own narrative is betrayed by revealing that it is not made of solely aluminium but also a composite of plastic. The paintings may appear as an optimistic solution for the issue of waste, but this is not the reading I intend to illustrate. I want to depict, rather, the great deal of effort that must be made to reintegrate something as simple as a few pieces of refundable waste, and give them the dignified status as “diverted permanently from the landfill”.  These paintings should raise the problem of reintegration of waste. 

Even in my video work, the detritus does not become a new entity on its own. It simply gets documented through its narrative journey to the landfill. My work aims for proportional representation of waste in the gallery, of which I have barely scratched the surface.  

Jen O’Connor. Photo courtesy of CJ Sommerfeld

AC: Upon completion, you archive many of your works that are too big to store using video documentation. How did you formulate the idea to preserve your larger pieces using this approach?

JO: When I decided to produce works using garbage, I had to abandon my painting practice. Since there was so much material available, I rapidly began to work on a larger scale. These objects were not commodifiable, nor could they be stored easily, so the only hope for them to exist as artworks was through an ephemeral assemblage. In an effort to preserve my work, I chose to document.  

AC: Can you give us some examples of works which you documented via film?

The first body of work that I made entirely out of garbage was called “The Apartment”. It was a replica of my bachelor apartment made entirely out of garbage. After completing this work, I realised that I could also use both my body and others’ as free materials through performance; I then decided to build a theatre in the parking lot made entirely out of waste. This was named the Garbage Conglomerate Theatre and became the stage of Trash Talk.

Following my work through the GCT and my post-graduation art practice has veered towards film and video where I do not make the usage of garbage explicit. Instead I produce short films with a collaborative group named Sacred Projections; we have no funding which leads us to make use of free, found, scavenged and borrowed materials.

AC: What’s next on the horizon for your upcoming works?  

JO: I like to paint, draw, and illustrate tattoos when I am working solo, but I am invested in creative collaborative work at the moment. I believe that collaboration is just as important, and that it can be quite a difficult skill to have people working together towards a goal or a dream. Given the polarized directions in which our society is being pulled, I think that the community working together is of paramount importance, so I’ve been channelling my energy into producing Sacred Projections.

Sacred Projections is an open call to artists where we come together to produce short films on a monthly basis. Any type of collaboration can be difficult, so working together creatively gives us some room for abstraction. We work together to solve problems without the situation needing to be overly stressful. We are all participating because we want to, and everyone brings something to the table.I want to continue creating in this way for the time being. 

Aside from that project, I am still smelting cans and receiving interesting results in doing so. As I continue to smelt, I am collecting these materials for a future series of paintings. I also have a series of painted works in progress, entitled “22”; this series draws upon archetypes, alchemy, astrology, psychology and human behaviour. It will illustrate narratives that are reoccurring in the sphere of human activity. 

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Jen O’Connor

Website | Sacred Projections YouTube | Garbage Conglomerate YouTube

CJ Sommerfeld (she/her) is a Vancouver-based freelance writer with a particular interest in the convergence of language, art and society. When she is not writing, you can find her experimenting with harmonic minor progressions on her keyboard.

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Artist Spotlight: Jen O'Connor (Part I)

Jen O’Connor. Photo courtesy of CJ Sommerfeld

Jen O’Connor loves garbage. Confronting it as something other than society’s discarded materials, she merges this sourced waste with oil paints to create something greater than the sum of its parts. Once coalesced on canvas, her foraged pieces are preserved and a new narrative around their existence is constructed. In questioning the perceived lack of utility that surrounds garbage, O’Connor rejects consumerist culture and its intersection with creation, and instead finds use in these rejected objects. 

After graduating with a BFA from Emily Carr University of Art + Design in 2020, O’Connor continues to create out of her space in Vancouver’s Chinatown. Anticipate a constellation’s worth of beer cans, debris and other seemingly prosaic items metamorphosed into plausible art-making materials in O’Connor’s works. Don’t expect blatant trash attached to canvas, but instead waste transfigured. By exposing her scavenged cans to high temperatures—a process known as smelting—the cans anodize, extinguishing their silvery colour and transforming to one that’s golden and, at times, iridescent.

Also Cool recently sat down with O’Connor to jump inside her world of beer cans and oil paints. In this first-half of our conversation, we dove into her critiques of consumption in the art world, her TV show titled Trash Talk, and sourcing debris from an off-grid island for one of her most recent works — “Smelt Series”.

The Smelt Series, created on Lasqueti Island B.C. Photo courtesy of CJ Sommerfeld

CJ Sommerfeld for Also Cool: Hey Jen, thanks for taking the time to chat with Also Cool! To get things started: you very cleverly integrate waste into your painting works, how did this practice first come about?  

Jen O’Connor: While completing my BFA at Emily Carr, I had some profound realizations about the necessity of consuming products for the making of art. I rejected shopping as the basis for art-making, resolving instead to produce works while buying nothing. This led me away from painting and towards garbage sculpture. I scavenged, found, and borrowed materials, all while also using bodies (mine and others’) through performance. I wanted to know how much I could create without consuming.

This led me to construct an entire theatre in the Easy Park parking lot adjacent to Emily Carr. I then hosted a performance entitled Trash Talk, which was a TV show-formatted performance about waste. I was the host,  and would ask participants to join me onstage to discuss issues related to waste. This became an incubator of ideas for sustainable practices; a forum where ideas, jokes and even a think tank emerged in response to the changes that we wanted to see. This series is available to see on my Garbage Conglomerate YouTube channel. 

Since this work, I have developed two parallel practices. I’ve resumed my painting practice, and have most recently produced a body of work called “The Smelt Series”. This is an effort to combine post-consumer materials with the traditional materials of art-making, such as paint and canvas. I have also continued my work with video, where I document and animate sculptures and sets through reusing, borrowing materials while incorporating collaborators to create moving paintings. 

Also Cool: Your painting practice is self-described as an "analogy to alchemy", one that seeks to derive its redemptive substance from “base matter”. Can you further demystify your work's comparison to medieval chemistry?  To clarify for our readers, can you elaborate on the term base matter with regards to your works?  

Jen: Alchemists thought that at the root of all matter was the supreme substance of gold, and if they could refine them enough, they could transmute all metals into gold. Each alchemist would have a different definition of what would be considered “base matter”, depending on their practice. Some considered ocean water to be “base matter” because it is the largest ratio of substance on earth. Other alchemists would refer to a “base matter” simply as the material they worked with the most.  Personally, I consider my base matter to be garbage or waste — anything that can be acquired for free. When I work with my materials, I seek to transform unwanted garbage into art that has value.  

As we know, iron cannot become gold except for perhaps in a particle accelerator. Many other alchemists encountered the difficulty of what it was they had set out to do, and began their work instead on the metaphysical level. If one could tune into the creativity of God and the universe, this transformation could happen at the level of spiritual realization, and it would give them control over all matter. 

I also work with the spiritual element of creation in my work by developing my intuition. When working with my materials, I leave a lot of room for the matter to express itself through the processes. I like to think that my process is reflected in the work, and hope that viewers  see my paintings as matter expressing itself.

AC: What are some examples of waste materials that we can see in your works? Where do you typically source them? 

JO: My definition of waste is broad. I would argue that materials used in the pursuit of reaching certain standards in painting, for example, also create a lot of waste. During my time as a painter, I created dozens of paintings that weren’t any good; they later became building materials for the awning on my Garbage Conglomerate Theatre.  

Emily Carr was an excellent place to source materials, and their dumpster became a horn of plenty to an artist like me. However, with increasing bureaucracy and legislation, these free rides became  short-lived. ECUAD has since made a great effort to contain their waste under lock and key, so I am no longer able to access it.  

Since graduation, I’ve resumed painting practice. Today, my work blends traditional materials such as canvas and paint with what one might consider “waste”. My favourite material to use is beer cans, since they are light and they can be affixed to either canvas or panel. Not only do I use beer cans, I prefer to have them undergo a process of smelting to allow them to reveal their more interesting properties and express themselves as matter before they are incorporated. The smelting process is where I expose the cans to flames and high temperatures, so that they begin to melt and anodize. Since aluminium has such a low melting point, the cans are promptly removed and often have interesting effects. Oftentimes, the anodizing causes the cans to take on golden properties that are reminiscent of alchemy.  

I also source a lot of debris from an off-grid island where I like to spend a lot of my time. It is difficult to dispose of waste in this environment, so there are a lot of materials for me to use. I curate the most interesting pieces and what would be easily incorporated into my painting practice and find a lot of visually interesting waste to use. 

Check back in to read part 2 of our conversation with Jen O’Connor!

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Jen O’Connor

Website | Sacred Projections YouTube | Garbage Conglomerate YouTube

CJ Sommerfeld (she/her) is a Vancouver-based freelance writer with a particular interest in the convergence of language, art and society. When she is not writing, you can find her experimenting with harmonic minor progressions on her keyboard.

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