Jeana Eve Klein "Topless Beach - Guadalupe"

Jeana Eve Klein is an artist and educator based in Boone, North Carolina, where she is Professor of Fibers in the Art Department at Appalachian State University. Klein’s wide-ranging studio practice addresses recurring themes of labor and value, social media and other digital relationships, language and communication, the inherent meaning in materials, the fallibility and malleability of memory, and the limitations of documentation. As a textiles generalist and conceptually driven artist, the processes and materials she uses vary from project to project, including traditional textiles techniques such as weaving and knitting as well as digital media, installation, and social practice. Klein’s work has been exhibited widely, including solo exhibitions at OZ Arts (Nashville) and ArtSpace (Raleigh) and group exhibitions at the Museum of Design (Atlanta) and PULSE Contemporary Art Fair (Miami Beach). Klein earned her undergraduate degree from North Carolina State University and MFA from Arizona State University. She is a past recipient of the North Carolina Arts Council Individual Craft Artist Fellowship. Klein has exactly one tattoo (a blue dot on her right foot based on a dye spill), is a passionate-yet mediocre gardener, and challenges anyone to a game of Boggle. Her home includes a husband, two kids, two guinea pigs, and a few house plants she’s trying to keep alive.

“In my most recent work, I am comparing lived experience with its representation through bead-woven interpretations of my grandparents’ travel photos from the 1990s. After my grandparents died, I – as the artist in the family – ended up with all the random leftovers no one else wanted, including three floral photo albums with a post-it note on top scrawled with “cruise pix (toss)” in my dad’s handwriting. Although the photos in these albums are from just 20-30 years ago, they represent a completely different era of travel documentation, when photos were taken with the preciousness of film and shared through the intimacy of tangible albums. By recreating/ reinventing/ resurrecting these images, I am reflecting on the dramatic evolution of vernacular photography and the impact thereon of digital and social media. Rather than the intimacy and privacy represented in my grandparents’ photo albums, we now have an unlimited capacity for documentation which can then be carefully curated and shared instantly with the masses. I am pixelating the images through beads and making them larger than life, all for public display – essentially transforming the typical social media sharing of today into physical form.” - Jeana Eve Klein