Meet Jaqueline Cedar | Artist / Director @ Good Naked Gallery

We had the good fortune of connecting with Jaqueline Cedar and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Jaqueline, why did you pursue a creative career?
My father is an actor and I grew up inspired by his practice. Watching actors bring words to life on stage felt like the most magical place to be and I loved paying attention to the way performers activated their bodies to create feeling through gesture. I was lucky enough to get to experiment with a range of activities as a kid (from board games to dance to horseback riding) and I found myself deeply invested in looking at and developing art starting around twelve when my middle school drawing teacher encouraged me to take more classes outside of her curriculum. My first solo adventure post acquiring my drivers license took me straight to LACMA followed by the silent independent movie theater down the road. Despite a short stint in the pre-med world, by the time I reached my sophomore year in college I couldn’t imagine a life without making, so continuing to pursue a creative practice in graduate school seemed like the most significant option. I was always interested in and curious about a variety of professional careers but I never felt totally myself if I wasn’t making and exploring art regularly. I learned soon after graduating from my MFA at Columbia in Visual Arts that surviving as an artist meant being involved in a whole bunch of pursuits outside of the studio (day jobs, PR, gallery openings, research, etc). I’m always curious about how artists find a way to thrive in this balance of making and sharing their work and I love the challenge of trying to resolve this life-long puzzle.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
Lately my art takes much inspiration from close looking and daily observations. Holding space and time for gathering visual information is one of my great pleasures and I enjoy this practice in both waking and dream states. Recurring images make their way into my paintings often and I try to listen to these directions and follow their lead. Having spent the majority of my life in cities (primarily Los Angeles and NYC), I take respite in wide open spaces whenever possible (beaches, swimming, and hiking give me room to return to the indoor space of the studio with focus and attention). I don’t take for granted the importance of travel and exploration outside of one’s everyday environment. When I’m not able to move freely outside of my current home city (Brooklyn) I try to encounter familiar places with fresh eyes. I love finding ways to get lost in a space I know well and make a habit of taking new turns as often as possible.

Being an artist in school always came easily to me. In my youth and early adulthood educational institutions felt like the perfect structures to bump up against and I took comfort in their consistency. I found great mentorship in these spaces and they gave me the chance to develop what would later become an independent practice. Learning to build a community outside of these predetermined structures has been challenging and rewarding. I feel an enormous sense of pride and agency in culling groups of like-minded artists and thinkers into spaces where we can develop ideas together. Starting a gallery (Good Naked) has allowed a wonderful structure for these kinds of explorations and I love the way my personal studio practice and relationship to the artists I represent feed each other. Being an artist can be quite solitary and building community has created a distinct opportunity for balance and experimentation in ways I had not fully anticipated as I began my initial curatorial pursuits.

I’ve spent the last few months creating a new body of paintings that I just presented with Shelter Gallery at NADA NY last week. I was excited to share these private moments and views into dream-like spaces where figures explore their environments with a kind of curiosity and slowness that keeps them attentive to their bodies, light, and pace. Quiet walks and dark open natural worlds combined to create comforting familiarity and a hint of disturbance or change to come.  My next group of paintings will be on view with Platform and Shelter Gallery this June (https://www.platformart.com/).

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
Hike, beach, food, repeat. Love walking and swimming in Malibu and tacos in the valley where I grew up.
LACMA and the Huntington Gardens are still two of my favorite institutions. I’m always game to play tourist in my home town.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
I’ve been fortunate to have an amazing support network starting with my family, especially my mom – a true dreamer. There was never a question of whether or not an artistic career was viable and my parents and sister (also an artist in film) shared the kind of unwavering enthusiasm that has allowed me the confidence to feel bold and brave in pursuing the great risk that is a life-long practice in the arts. In high school Dori Kulwin encouraged me to explore figure drawing classes on the weekends and summers at USC, Otis, and CalArts. In college Don Suggs, Lari Pittman, James Welling, and Catherine Opie were great mentors. I still have their voices in my head in the studio. They shared tricks of the trade around finding a studio and reinvesting in unfinished works. They taught me to be a self-starter and treated me with the respect of a peer even in my very early stages of exploration in painting and photography. In graduate school Jackie Battenfield championed the merits of professional practice and her advice and wisdom around being kind and generous in all encounters (large and small) still rings true. I feel grateful nowadays to be surrounded by an amazing group of artist peers. I’m consistently inspired by the ways in which my fellow makers explore alternative lifestyles, push themselves creatively on a daily basis, and show up for each other as they support the kind of experimentation and play that makes up an artistic practice. Visit Paula Wilson and Mike Lagg at MoMAZoZo if you’re in the southwest and looking for magic, or Emily Noelle Lambert and Nicolas Papoin at Field Day if you’re in the northeast and looking for warmth, collaboration, and bursts of creativity in every direction.

Website: www.jaquelinecedar.com

Instagram: @jaquelinecedar

Image Credits
Photos by Rob Ventura.