Jillian Conrad
"Flings and Filings Series: Some Falling", 2024
Graphite pencil leads and archival glue on paper
17 x 14 inches (43.2 x 36.6 cm)
Courtesy of the Artist

Selected by John Yau

Jillian Conrad’s artistic practice addresses themes of materiality and intangibility. Her ongoing series Flings and Filings gathers broken pencil leads to create works that are both very thin sculptures and visual compositions on paper, blurring the boundary between sculpture and drawing.  As a current Fulbright Scholar at Cardiff University, Jillian is developing a group of map-drawings of the holy wells in Wales, UK, called holy-hole where water and landscape reflect the potent threshold between the visible and invisible. In 2025, she will create a new, large-scale installation for What Drawing Can Be at the Menil Drawing Institute, Houston, TX. Jillian’s work has been exhibited at and supported by the Maison Dora Maar, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Bronx Museum, Smackmellon, Socrates Sculpture Park, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Marie Walsh Sharpe Space Program, Headlands Center for the Arts, The Core Program (at the MFAH, Houston) and Artadia. Conrad’s work has been reviewed and discussed in numerous publications, including Artforum, Hyperallergic, Art Lies, and the New York Times. She is an Associate Professor in the Sculpture Department at the University of Houston. Jillian is currently at work on a book of essays on caves and cave art spanning west Texas to southern France called Seeing in the Dark.