Jan Gilbert (visual artist)
American visual artist (born 1953)
Jan Gilbert (born June 28, 1953) is an American visual artist, curator, and educator based in New Orleans. Since the 1980s, she has been known for her interdisciplinary and multi-media works that incorporate a variety of found objects. In a review of her Threshold exhibition, writer D. Eric Bookhardt wrote: “Gilbert’s exploration of an ordinary, even tawdry reality dissects not merely the images, but the mechanics of perception along with our assumptions about art, objects, and reality.”
Gilbert's work has been shown in galleries, museums, public art installations, and other venues both across the U.S. and abroad. Gilbert has been recognized with a number of awards, including individual artist fellowships from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, Southern Arts Federation and National Endowment for the Arts, Louisiana Division of the Arts, Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, and Art Matters. Her projects have also been supported by grants from the NEA and Rockefeller Initiative for Interdisciplinary Artists, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Ford Foundation, and National Association of Artists' Organizations, among others.
Early life
Jan Gilbert was born in New Orleans in 1953 to Helen Basilo and Charlie Gilbert and grew up in the Lakeview neighborhood of New Orleans. As a child, Gilbert's mother encouraged her to explore journaling with images, as well as ceramics and collages; Gilbert also learned sewing from her maternal grandmother, a trained seamstress; Gilbert credits these early skills as foundational for her development as an interdisciplinary mixed-media artist.
After receiving her bachelor's degree from University of New Orleans in 1980, Gilbert went on to earn a Master of Fine Arts in Painting from Tulane University in 1982.
Art and career
Gilbert is known for her interdisciplinary mixed-media work, incorporating found objects, painting, printmaking, photography, and installation to create both two-dimensional and three-dimensional works of varying sizes. Gilbert has stated that her desire to use found objects in art pieces manifested during childhood, which led to her building the vast personal archive that has provided foundation for many of her works.
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