Jade Walker
We each find tonal shifts in the skin we inhabit, from the underside of our feet to the tender skin at our wrists. As our largest organ and one that is so tightly stitched to our identities, these shifts in the color of our skin are important but sometimes not detected until examined. Isolating a swatch of color from our bodies and remixing various samples create an overall palette and allow an insight into the complexity of our identity, our heritage, and the social weight both carry.Heartfelt is specially crafted for and inspired by the wearer of the work, Robert Jackson Harrington. He provided six color samples of his skin from a Sherwin Williams color deck, which were used to create the shades of the work. The shape repeated in each of the six fabric books references a birthmark or “Mark of Royalty” Robert wears.
Jade Walker is a sculptor living in Austin, Texas. She received her BFA from the University of Florida and her MFA from The University of Texas at Austin. Walker’s installations and sculptures consist of her personal struggle with spectatorship, binaries within gender and race, abstraction, narrative, found objects, desire, and the body as temporal. Her work has been included in solo exhibitions at Austin Museum of Art (now The Contemporary Austin), Blue Star Contemporary Arts, Lawndale Art Center, and the University Art Galleries Texas State.
Most recently, Walker has presented work in a solo exhibition at Dimension Gallery in Austin and is looking forward to solo exhibitions at Dimension Gallery and Women and their Work in 2020.