Juliet Jacobson's drawings take as their subject items so quotidian they would typically not merit more than a passing glance—a notched cutting board, a broken-in work glove, the twisted cord of a phone charger: humble, common objects that many people own or come into contact with during their daily routine. These items are marked by the suggestion of use: fingerprints haunt the grimy surface of a computer screen; the rumpled sheets of an unmade bed point to the movements of unseen figures. Such materials of everyday life allude to universal experiences, but only through the physical particularities of each object, full of distinctive, singular presence imbued by the hand or a body that has passed over its surfaces.

Each subject is reproduced at actual size, centered and isolated within the frame, and with the aid of photographic studies Jacobson meticulously renders her subjects. Inherent in the labor required to produce these drawings is Jacobson’s dual preoccupation with attention and vision: what insights exacting transcription can yield; how distorting the technologies that extend human vision can be; how a faithful representation can be clouded by an associated set of projected cultural meanings, a haze of illusions.

Juliet Jacobson (b.1977, Puyallup, WA) attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago as an undergraduate before receiving her MFA from New York University in 2006. Jacobson’s work has been exhibited at New York University, New York’s Center for Book Arts, and the Busan Museum of Modern Art in Busan, Korea, among other institutions, galleries, and art fairs.