Today we’d like to introduce you to Karen Jerzyk.
Karen, we’d love to hear your story and how you got to where you are today both personally and as an artist.
I grew up in the 80s which I guess explains a lot, in hindsight. I was raised on movies like Labyrinth, The Neverending Story, ET, Goonies, etc etc. I was hooked on movies from a young age. I tried a bunch of artistic outlets growing up- drawing, painting, sculpting- but it always came back around to being enamored with cinema. I’ve always been hard on myself, and consciously try to be a realist, so there came a point (around junior high school, I must have been around 12) when I looked around me and noticed that I just wasn’t that great at what I was doing. By that age, you’re pretty much aware of who’s REALLY good at something and who’s “meh” at something- I felt I was in the “meh” realm in a lot of things I was trying and I didn’t want to be mediocre at anything, I just wanted to be incredible at SOMETHING.
Around the time I was growing frustrated with my newfound realization that my “artistic abilities” weren’t getting me anywhere, a good friend of mine had “borrowed” (more like took without permission) his stepfather’s giant VHS camcorder (we would break our backs lugging that thing around). We’d make short little movies- mostly claymation (this was also the year Nightmare Before Christmas came out so I was super obsessed with stop-animation). Kids at our school would beg for copies. People actually liked what I was creating. It was an amazing feeling (I was always an outcast and bullied- sometimes not treated very kindly by my own “friends”, so to feel like I mattered was the best feeling).
I took some theater classes in high school and kept up with the videography. By the time I went to college, I was expressing interest in manipulating images digitally. In 2003 when my parents gifted me with my first digital camera for graduation (a whopping 3 megapixels). I had never been much into photography growing up but suddenly I loved it. From 2003 until around 2010 my passion was concert photography. There was nothing like the feeling of getting a photo pass and the rush of shooting a live band. It gave me a purpose. I felt like I belonged. But something was still missing. There was some sort of insatiable desire deep inside me that wasn’t being filled. Around 2009, a friend had suggested that I tried shooting models. “What?!?!” I asked. “That’s cheesy. No”. But I did. I started shooting models. Really, really terrible photos of models. I had no concepts, no decent wardrobe, no decent ideas and no cool places to shoot. I also didn’t have a studio, and never in this lifetime could afford my own, so I desperately searched for interesting locations. That’s when I came across a photo of a theater that was in an abandoned asylum in CT. Up until that point, I had absolutely no clue that places like that existed. The dystopian world sort of just wormed its way into my work and never really left.
Of course, years of doing this and I’m bound to get in some trouble, right? In 2014 I was arrested for trespassing. Somehow my whole story went viral and made TV news, etc etc. It was pretty terrible while it was happening, but I have to say, it was THE best thing to ever happen to me in my career. As they say, no publicity is bad publicity. My print sales and commissions skyrocketed, and legitimate publications were reaching out to me for interviews- my work was spread in ways that were unimaginable to me prior to this “incident” (as it will be called for all time).
After all this, I started trying to branch out and do different kinds of work, so that my portfolio wasn’t stagnant. I started doing super stylized self-portraits, and about a year after that, I did a monochromatic series that ended up being incredible successful. I’m always trying to reinvent myself and work with new people, and I love to travel. I’m currently working on a movie (I can’t say any details just yet, but I’m so incredibly excited to share when all is said and done) as well as a whole slew of new photo series.
We’d love to hear more about your art. What do you do you do and why and what do you hope others will take away from your work?
I’ve always felt like an outsider. It’s probably cliché to say, but I always found friendship in creating. It was a seemingly easier way for me to communicate- even now. When my father passed away unexpectedly in 2011, I found myself very alone with no one to talk to. It was scary. I felt true helplessness. A dark, weighted emptiness that I will never in this lifetime be able to describe. The only way I got through it was through my work. Suddenly, my photos went from “eh, cool location I guess” that a viewer would just look at for a second and walk by to deeply symbolic, conceptually emotional visuals. I went into a severe depression. My body was awake but my brain was somewhere else. All of a sudden, everything clicked for me, it’s sad and very ironic that the death of my father was the birth of my photography career. My work before he died and after was like night and day. I just so deeply wanted to connect with people who understood what I was going through, and luckily I was able to through my work. People who understood the situation could now understand me. The recognized the pain in my work. When people look at my work, they are unknowingly looking at my father’s life and death. They’re looking at my loneliness. At how I feel when a complete stranger has nothing but horrible things to say about me. At how uncomfortable I feel in my own skin.
I guess my main goal is just understanding. I obviously want people to enjoy my work, but I just really want them to UNDERSTAND it. If you look at it and think “horror”, then you just don’t get it. You don’t get the softness embedded in the darkness that we see on a daily basis in our own lives. I want my work to be read almost as a visual book.
What do you know now that you wished you had learned earlier?
In terms of advice to artists: never give up. But seriously. Nothing is out of grasp. No dream too big and no concept unobtainable. I’ve done shoots with next to nothing for funding, over and over and over again. The most frustrating thing to me is hearing people’s ideas, then hearing them say in the same breath “but I can’t do it” without trying. There’s ALWAYS a way! And critique yourself. Don’t be TOO harsh, but make sure you’re not always satisfied with what you’re doing. If you’re 100 percent satisfied, that means you give up and learning and growing. Don’t become complacent, strive to be better than you were 6 months ago. Keep your head down and stay a thousand percent focused on your work- power through the drama and the people keeping you down because I promise, it will all sort itself out.
Do you have any events or exhibitions coming up? Where would one go to see more of your work? How can people support you and your artwork?
Paying for shoots is huge. I believe that if you’re an individual seeking someone else’s services, that you should ALWAYS ask what they charge/their rates. I’m a small business owner and giving things away for free (like my services) isn’t the best practice. Buying prints also helps tremendously. I can be found on Instagram @karen.jerzyk.photo, Facebook (Karen Jerzyk Photo), and my website is https://karenjerzykphoto.com.
I currently have work in the Dark Art Emporium in Long Beach, CA and Blinq Art gallery in Australia. My work will also be in 50 Contemporary Women Artists: Groundbreaking Contemporary Art from 1960 to Now, which is being released this October. Aside from all that, I love vending and selling my prints at events all over the country and typically post updates of where I’ll be doing that on my social media platforms.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://karenjerzykphoto.com
- Email: karenjerzykphotography@gmail.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/karen.jerzyk.photo
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/karenjerzykphoto
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/KJerzykPhoto
- Other: https://www.buzzfeed.com/lauragallant/this-photographer-transforms-one-room-into-a-world-of-colour?utm_term=.vrvoEZp59#.vjxOq1mXJ
Getting in touch: BostonVoyager is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.
