Growing up in a rigid and pious Catholic home did not leave any room for feeling comfortable with much of anything, let alone one’s body. You couldn’t like it, you were forbidden to touch it, for fear of mortal sin, and you certainly shouldn’t look at it. All information was kept under lock and key, just waiting for some unfortunate accident to happen, due to lack of knowledge.

I am drawn to female artists that explore women’s bodies in relationship to the cultural mores of their times. One of my favorites is Louise Bourgeois’ Femme Maison (Women House) series. These exemplified the realities of a mother tethered to her home with inescapable responsibilities.

In Louise Bourgeois: Drawing and Observations Lawrence Rinder states, “…the existentialists placed absurdity in a top hat and pulled out liberation. Bourgeois’s art depended on such comic-tragic paradox, the surprising ability of negative and positive to reverse”.

Now I can unashamedly have my cake — and eat it too.

Artist Statement

My name is Linda Jurkiewicz. A woman’s challenge of self-determination dominates my mind and work. I grew up on the cusp of the Second Wave of Feminism and I believed that I was on the tipping point of women getting their rights. I was sure that my generation was going to be the recipient of this new open-mindedness and fairness for women. Today, I continue to be reminded that the scale not only did not complete its tip but has reversed its course in many areas of women’s lives.

My insights are transmitted through personal narratives, mine, and others. I want the viewer to be reminded of the daily conflicts experienced by women in our culture; unequal domestic expectations, unpaid roles as caretakers, sexualization and exploitation of women and girls, and generational struggles with body image.

I explore these serious issues thoughtfully, with my own sense of humor. By using repetition in my work I symbolize the importance of continued planned action to create change in one’s life. I utilize found objects and repurposed cloth to stress that anyone can work with what they have.

Cloth itself holds human history within its tactile experience. It is omnipresent in our past and present lives, our homes, and our cultural way of remembering. By using stitch as mark-making on cloth I can tell a story with gesture and imagery to a contemporary audience. My art form honors the collective work of women and seeks to call out an essential reminder of our importance in this world and the struggles that continue to be unheard.

Bio

Linda Jurkiewicz lives in Kansas City, Missouri and began working with fiber in 2005. She credits her upbringing as a first-generation Ukrainian-Croatian for her “make-do” attitude and her delight in upcycling repurposed materials, especially “woman’s work” such as dish towels, household items, and clothing. Her consequential fiber work incorporates soft sculpture, wordplay, idiom, embroidery, wall hangings, plush form, sequential dioramas, and installations which delve into the cultural roles of women in America over the last century. She pushes viewers to reexamine these roles that are changing, to trade nostalgia for empowerment.

Jurkiewicz’s work has been shown in four solo shows in Kansas City galleries since 2022, with her most recent show, The Top-Half Bakery: Ode to the Prudish Mother at the Leedy-Voulkos Art Center. Her work has been juried into numerous exhibitions locally. Nationally, her work has been included in The Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts, Delta Triennial, Little Rock AR (2024), Woman Made Gallery 24th International Exhibit, Chicago, Illinois (2023), Intersect Art Center Blue Hour, St. Louis, MO (2023), Amarillo Museum of Art Biennial-600: Textile/Fiber, Amarillo, Texas (2019), Raw – The Exhibition at Indiana University (2018), Sacred Threads in Herndon, VA (2017 and 2019), The Blue Show at the Core New Art Space (2017) and The Engaged Object at the Foothills Art Center (2016), both in Denver, Colorado, and Welcome to My World: Mental Health Awareness through Art at the MIRI Gallery (2016), Salt Lake City, Utah. Jurkiewicz is a member of the Kansas City Artists Coalition.