I make art to impact the larger world beyond the fine art world. If my art won’t in some small way change the world, then why should I make it? From the time when I began making textiles and sculpture forty years ago at Syracuse University, to the manufacture of genetic hybrids that I created while at the Bio Art Lab at SVA, to the painting and sculpture I am doing now -- directly related to Monarch Butterfly migration and preservation -- I create work with a high degree of craftsmanship and a message. All of my material practice is intentionally labor intensive. Whether I am working with silicone, which I apply in transparent layers until it mimics real skin, or cast bronze, or applying individual hairs to a 12-foot sculpture, I am prolific and obsessed with attention to detail. I received an Excellence in Jewelry Award from Montclair State University, a Research Project from the BMW Guggenheim Lab that resulted in impactful programming at the intersection of urban ecology and architecture with ecological-artist collective SPURSE, and have participated in numerous group exhibitions regionally as well as overseas in London, Berlin, and Montecastello, Italy.

 

“Grotesque and beautiful, Jamie Levine’s work makes us both think – and feel – the Earth turning beneath our feet, the times in which we live...”  

--Sarah Schmerler, Monograph: Jamie Levine’s Chimeric Future, 2017