Jamey Braden
Jamey Braden makes drawings with words and images because she needs to let her internal narrator “air out.” She sometimes works in the third dimension, finding things and forming them into clumps with the feeling and hope that these culled materials were always meant to be together like long-lost siblings.
Taxonomy of Thanks is just that —- a collection of images and objects that illustrate, consider, question, and state “thanks.” Paintings of familiar plastic thank-you bags share their thoughts, sometimes reflexive (“who am I thanking?”) and uniquely anthropomorphic (“I feel different.”) Actual plastic thank-you bags are displayed as artifacts or specimens, hi-lighting the rich diversity of such a commonly used, discarded, and overlooked object.
These drawings and paintings are meant to dissect the meaning and feeling of thankfulness. A spectrum of thanks will be delineated from the least thankful expressions to the most heart-felt. What to be thankful for and what not to be thankful for will also be addressed for future reference and to eliminate any confusion. In these drawings, “thank you” no longer exists as an auto-response to familiar and repetitive gesture, it becomes a language in its own two words, one laced with nuance and deeper meaning.
Beyond simple classification, personal experience and introspection broaden this body of work into a taxonomy of confusion, favorites, social norms and value systems.