Patrick Jacobs is a Brooklyn-based artist whose work addresses the natural world, landscape and the environment through a range of mediums including sculpture, installation and printmaking.
The group of three rough hewn bronze sculptures, installed for BHAA’s ArtScape 2024 outside the Tennis Tea, is from the series, “Les Fleurs du Mal,” which takes its name from Charles Baudelaire’s eponymous book of poems.
The bronzes were cast from mud, sticks and other materials initially gathered from the forest floor in New Hampshire during Jacobs’ residency at the MacDowell Colony in 2016. Recalling human, botanical and animal forms, they conjure up spirits of the landscape that are whimsical, playful and stand guard over the environment.
The ArtScapes installation, is arranged at different locations within a flower bed of azaleas in the center of the Tennis Tea driveway, forming a kind of garden of fleurs du mal, emerging from the landscape.
The fidelity of the casting captures finger and handprints, sagging blobs, and broken sticks, showing the immediacy of their creation. The bronzes are a counterpoint to the meticulousness of Jacobs’ dioramas and other sculptures and installations. However, the different materials and processes provide an impetus for a more fluid and strange nature – a mysterious hortulus animae, both enticing and liberating.
Jacobs received an MFA in 1999 from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and has exhibited both nationally and internationally. His recent work is currently on view at the New York Botanical Garden’s “Wonderland: Curious Nature” exhibition through October 27th.
You can see more of Patrick’s work on his website: www.patrickjacobs.info
"Four-Legged Tulip Man" 2019. Bronze. 65.5" x 41.5" x 37"
“Smiling Head” 2019. Bronze. 16" x 27" x 7"
"Scarecrow" 2019. Bronze. 32.5" x 21" x 23"