SPOTLIGHT ON ROCKFORD ART MUSEUM PERMANENT COLLECTION:

Jeanne Ludeke (American, b. 1956)

"Save Kathy’s", 2015

gouache on paper

Collection of Rockford Art Museum

2016 Dean Alan Olson Purchase Award

ARTIST STATEMENT

I come from a family of builders and makers. My father built the house I grew up in and my mother remained in that house until she passed away in 2014. While sorting through her belongings with my brothers and sisters, I became interested in the cardboard boxes my mother had used to store and preserve what was important to her. The history of what each box had once held was recorded with her script on the lids and sides of the boxes. What she had saved and valued and how it was kept spoke of her connection to our family and her relationship with the material world. For me, the boxes became a metaphor for the transience of home, family and the impermanence of things. These box paintings evolved from a series of paper houses that were painted as observational studies. They embodied the idea of home and a sense of place, but also the temporary nature of the structure of our families.—Jeanne Ludeke, 2016

Ludeke received her undergraduate and master’s degrees from Northern Illinois University in DeKalb. She currently lives and works in Rockford. Learn more at jeanneludeke.com.