Jennifer Trask by Wexler Gallery

JENNIFER TRASK

Jennifer Trask engages nature as both medium and subject, crafting intricate sculptures that merge unexpected materials—bone, vertebrae, butterfly wings, resin, metal, and antique frame fragments. Ranging from intimate jewelry to large-scale works, her pieces reflect a lifelong fascination with biology, archaeology, and anthropology. Her lavish compositions celebrate the splendor of the natural world while exploring the tension between the wild and the domesticated, evoking the rich visual language of 17th-century Dutch vanitas paintings and Victorian curiosity cabinets.

Animal remains—antlers, horn, teeth, tusks, and bone—feature prominently in Trask’s work, transformed into radiant, organic forms that bloom with vitality, evoking cycles of death, transformation, and rebirth. At first glance, her pieces captivate with their elegance, but closer inspection reveals layers of intricacy: antlers woven seamlessly into sculptural forms, snake vertebrae forming delicate flower petals, and bones sourced from giraffes, chickens, cows, and camels integrated into compositions that challenge perceptions of life and decay.

“Bones are not morbid to me; they represent a life lived,” Trask explains. “There is history in the remnants of a plant or animal.”

For Trask, her process is about unearthing that history, allowing the materials to guide her. The physical constraints of each element—the bend of a horn, the density of a frame fragment—dictate their transformation. But beyond

11 x 17 x 4 inches

Tulipa I and II, 2013-14

Maple, bone, resin, encaustic medium, sewing needles

the physical, she follows the material’s inherent spirit, ensuring that each piece feels as though it has always existed in its final form. “There has to be authenticity to the process,” she says.

Though primarily a sculptor and jewelry maker, Trask considers herself “a painter at heart, albeit untrained.” She incorporates painterly techniques into her work, obsessing over surface finishes—exploring transparency, opacity, and texture to achieve a seamless visual harmony.

Her fascination with the interplay of the natural and artificial began during her studies at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston, where she complemented her metalsmithing coursework with classes in biology, anthropology, and archaeology. Frequent visits to Harvard’s Museum of Natural History and the Peabody Museum deepened her appreciation not only for the specimens on display but also for the ornate cases that housed them—an early hint at her interest in curation, preservation, and aesthetic presentation.

Trask’s work draws from the vanitas tradition, the moralistic still-life paintings popular in 16th- and 17th-century Netherlands. While these paintings were meant to caution against material excess, they themselves became objects of luxury—an irony that intrigues her. She is also drawn to their botanical depictions, where impossibly lush arrangements of flowers, blooming simultaneously despite seasonal impossibilities, serve as meditations on beauty, mortality, and illusion. “Naturally, the beauty of these paintings drew me in—the moodiness, a lush dark beauty,” she reflects.

Ultimately, Trask’s work interrogates humanity’s impulse to shape and curate nature in pursuit of beauty and abundance. Through her sculptures, she explores our perception of our place within the natural order—questioning whether we are its stewards, its collectors, or simply another fleeting part of its cycle.

In 2011, Trask was named a Fellow in Sculpture by the New York Foundation for the Arts. She was awarded the Peter S. Reed Foundation Individual Artist Grant in 2008. Trask was invited to give a workshop and public lecture at the Renwick/Smithsonian Museum as part of the Distinguished Artist Series in June of 2012. Recent international highlights include work shown at exclusive art fairs in Seoul, South Korea; Design Miami/BASEL; Cagnes-sur-Mer, France; and Munich, Germany.

In 2016, she was one of four multimedia artists selected for the prestigious Renwick Invitational: Visions and Revisions at the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C.

Trask’s work can be found in many public collections, including the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C.; the Museum of Art + Design in New York, NY; the Arkansas Art Center in Little Rock, AR; and the Houston Museum of Fine Arts; the CODA Museum in Apeldoorn, NL; Powerhouse Museum in Sydney, AU among others.