Jacqueline K. Kluver. Testimony of Spirit

"I’ve always loved hands,” says Jacqueline Kluver. She holds out her own, which are soft and strong. “I think of them as tools—these have done the tender task of diapering a baby to the work of digging a garden. Hands always stay true, they tell a person’s life.”
Kluver worked for several years in a nursing home, drawn by her interest in the residents’ stories, both told and as evidenced in their faces and hands. That fascination, plus a lifelong interest in art, compelled Kluver to draw studies and portraits. Using short, repetitive brush strokes, she echoed the hand gestures of endless generations of women’s daily routines: making things, stitching, shelling peas. Moving to a matrix, and using one of the earliest techniques, weaving, she plied torn strips of painted canvas—an homage to the process of making things by hand. “I strive to capture the visual chant, unassuming strength, and testimony of the spirit which lives in the soul of a woman’s work.”
Although this exploration was initially personal, akin to journaling, it progressed to experimentation, greater abstraction, and in answer to daughter Kirstin’s question, “What are you going to be when you grow up?”, a degree in fine art from UNO. “I challenged myself to a 100 percent effort to see what I could do,” says Kluver. Her thesis was a series of one hundred 12” square paintings, hung 10 x 10. Taking a philosophical approach, she explored the impact of changing one small element upon the group.
Her ongoing commitment means painting every day in her home studio, working through “mistakes,” taking chances, exploring and expressing her experiences with honesty and clarity. The ground is painted in big swipes, producing the “scaffolding” for subsequent, increasingly detailed layers. Human forms appear and disappear into the overall narrative. Her style of repetitive strokes has developed into a rhythmic visual vocabulary Kluver describes as pixelated. Her palette includes bright tones and cirrose shadows; gold suggests hidden treasures; unexpected color combinations spark surprise and seem to vibrate with dynamic energy.
She is represented locally at Modern Arts Midtown and will have a solo exhibition Feb. 2-25. Gallerist, artist, and brother Larry Roots plays no favorites when it comes to running a gallery. “I show her work because it’s good,” he says firmly. “She has a distinctive way of working with color. And her imagery suggests patterns in nature—sometimes aerial perspective, mosaic, or patchwork. There’s nothing else like it.”
Honoring a heritage of handwork, Kluver adds her own unique testimony to a richly-layered tapestry.