Jane Margarette is a Filipino American artist working in ceramics and installation. Her sculptures explore notions of strength, protection, sensuality, and captivity. The various animals and insects in her work, adorned with chains and lures, disguise themselves as mechanical locks that tempt viewers to touch and manipulate the ‘functional’ mechanisms.
Created by traditional slab construction, the interlocking puzzle-like objects Margarette creates also explore architectural motifs such as doors, windows, and gates. There is a surrealist quality present in her work—locks shaped like insects, doors with eyes, baskets of teeth and fruit. Playful with scale, Margarette is not trying to pass these objects off as the real thing, rather as icons glistening in fluid blue and muted pink, they yield their irresistible secrets.
Margarette enjoys the unpredictable alchemy of the glazing process, which introduces an element of surprise and imagination. Unlike painting one can’t control exactly how the final work will turn out; final forms emerge from the kiln—a metaphorical cocoon—transformed into glistening objects.
Jane Margarette (b. 1985, San Diego, CA) received her MFA in Ceramics from the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), Los Angeles, CA in 2020 and her BFA from California State University Long Beach, Long Beach, CA in 2016. She has exhibited her work in solo exhibitions at Anat Ebgi, Los Angeles, CA and 1969 Gallery, New York, NY. She has also exhibited in group exhibitions including Ruttkowski;68, Paris, France; Sargent’s Daughters, Los Angeles, CA; Galerie Wolfsen, Aalborg, Denmark; Grounds for Sculpture, Hamilton, NJ; and Moskowitz Bayse, Los Angeles, CA. The artist has taught as a professor of Ceramics at Cal State University, Bakersfield, CA and Cal State University, Long Beach, CA. Margarette’s work is in the permanent collection of the Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, CA. In 2023 she will have her first European solo exhibition with Ruttkowski;68 in Paris. Margarette lives and works in Los Angeles, CA.