The Jane Hartsook Gallery is pleased to present new work by Jennifer Rochlin curated by Angelik Vizcarrondo-Laboy. Aptly titled, "Clay Is Just Thick Paint" after a quotation from artist Peter Voulkos, this exhibition argues for the equality of clay and paint as artistic materials. Trained as a painter, Rochlin began working with clay in 2007 and now exclusively works with the medium. This exhibition features ten of her hand-built pots and reliefs, each of which tells a story about love, lust, or longing.

Rochlin’s pots and reliefs highlight her interest in storytelling and the human body. The former are metaphors for the body, each having its own lumps and imperfections. Every piece in this exhibition is a memory embodied. Rochlin covers her pots’ surfaces with vignettes whose painterly quality alludes to the way impressions often take precedent over details in our recollections. As viewers experience the pots in the round, they encounter scenes unbound by chronological order, just as personal memories often arise out of sequence. Even Rochlin’s construction methods connect to storytelling; the pinches and pokes she uses to give her pots form mirror the hand gestures storytellers use to punctuate their narratives.