Jaynie Gillman Crimmins

Safe Protected #1, shredded New Yorker mag, envelopes, mixed media

2021

Jaynie Gillman Crimmins, a Brooklyn based artist, has been creating art from her shredded financial statements and mail since 2009. She currently works with her junk mail, which is difficult to recycle because the inks have high concentrations of heavy metals. Elevating the ordinary and overlooked aspects of our daily existence, her intimate pieces use an economy of means and restraint of process, inspired and influenced by Ruth Asawa’s practice and work. Frank Wilczek’s book A Beautiful Question reveals that symmetry and economy are the distinctive features of beauty in nature. Her shredded junk mail is sewn and rolled meditatively to create textural surfaces reflecting these notions. In this recent body of work, The Enlightenment will not bow to the Inquisition, Crimmins deftly manipulates shredded non-profit and political solicitations, health care statements and magazine articles, material choices that are clever, resonant and far from random.