Window Dressing XXI: Jacqueline Overby
Image: Jacqueline Overby, Loose Lips Sink My Ship, 2022, fiber
Exhibition Dates: August 8 – August 15, 2022 (visible 24 hours/day)
Jacqueline Overby (b. 1991, San Antonio, TX) earned her BFA from Texas State University in 2016. A multi-disciplinary artist, Overby began as an oil painter and has since moved towards more performative and sculptural efforts, most recently delving into the social practice realm. Jacqueline currently lives and works in Austin and San Marcos, TX.
As a progression, she is currently working on expanding her practice with abstracted soft sculpture and needle felted forms. Overby takes inspiration from childhood cartoon aesthetic, pop cultural standards and her experiences with body dysmorphia. She is interested in the feminine, the masculine, and the non-binary and their relation to exaggerated geometric form, societal expectations and sexual inuendo. Some of the allegories in the work touch on the conversations between the comforts of childhood toys and the traumas of adulthood as it relates to nostalgia and a yearning for a lost innocence.
A large portion of her practice serves to process her own issues with mental health, self-image, sexual desires and trauma. Being a survivor of sexual assault and domestic violence, her needle felting process of repeatedly stabbing fibers back into themselves serves to meditate and heal while confronting various intrusive thoughts with a sense of humor, putting a band-aid on the grief. Exhibiting bright venomous hues, not unlike what poisonous animals use to ward off predators, she is interested in the role that color plays in the psychological response to a piece. In 2020, Overby founded MotherShip Studios with partner Courtney Peterson and has since focused on developing the community and constructing studios in the space located in San Marcos, Texas. MotherShip Studios mission goal is to strengthen the central Texas art scene by offering affordable studios and building a community network in which artists can thrive together.
