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www.jadehouben.com

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Artist Practice

I am a designer with a love for materials, movement, repetitions, texture patterns and color, and with a big interest in combining designing on the computer with a manual working process.

I use a process of trial and error. Making many experiments, and reflecting on the results, is what drives my work forward.

Most of the times that process starts even before I realize it myself. From the moment I receive some information that inspires me, my thoughts start shaping, turning and building. When I have processed the information and created an idea for a try-out, then I start drawing, on paper and on the computer. I have a very good spatial insight and a vivid imagination, and seeing these first designs in 2D helps me to visualize the shape I will achieve in 3D.

Based on that visualization I work out the design for the first tryout. And start assembling and realizing that tryout. Sometimes is what I imagined quite in line with the reality and sometimes not at all, and that can be so surprisingly interesting and beautiful.

I step back and review my result, evaluate my first tryouts and based on my reviews I start drawing again. I focus on emphasizing the positive qualities that I find in the first 3D tryout and adjust the disturbing or less beautiful parts. I repeat this process of drawing, cutting, assembling and evaluating again and again until I am satisfied with my results.

I like to work on different pieces at the same time and these different processes influence each other. The interesting thing about my work is that I can always go in many different directions and have a lot of possibilities, this means I always have to make decisions for which path I want to take for a given piece. This results in me sometimes not being able to work out a path or possibility immediately. Documenting and classifying all my ideas, drawings and tryouts, from the beginning to the end phase, is therefore extremely important, so that I can always go back, to find a solution or new inspiration.

You’ll find many influences of nature in my work. For me nature is a big inspiration source for my shapes colors and patterns. But I find inspiration in many different places. Including paintings and objects of other artists, books, my surroundings and my own tryouts and “mistakes”. I love to get inspired, but I’ll not let myself be limited by one subject.