Exploration: Coral

Jen McCleary attended Tyler School of Art (BFA Painting and Printmaking), University of the Arts (Continuing Education in Print Design), and University of Pennsylvania (MLA). She works both digitally and in traditional mixed-media collage and views the two seemingly different media as complimentary and rooted in the same process of collecting and arranging images in an intuititive and exploratory process. In 2019 she began to learn the craft of wheel-thrown ceramics, which she alters through decoupage and the traditional Japanese art of kintsugi (repairing broken items with gold and lacquer). This process of creation and destruction considers the inevitabilities of damage and healing as part of the beauty of an object. She also works as a freelance graphic designer specializing in book cover and layout design.