Doug Jeck is best known for his fragmented male figures sculpted in clay in a classical style. He also works in mixed media, painting, along with performance art. What makes Jeck’s work stand out from others is the way he removes body parts and even places some in different places causing the forms to look like “damaged figures”.
Jeck sees the "damaged figures" as the true ideal. He says that individuals do struggle and they do get beaten up by life, but they prevail and find meaning, and in prevailing there is beauty, there is heroism, and there is the meaning of what it is to be human. His figures are a reflection of psychology rather than a reflection of specific people.
Doug Jeck is currently an Associate Professor at University of Washington in the school of Art, Art history, and Design.
"My work takes a long time to make. I build a hollow human body by adding thin strips of clay on top of each other an inch at a time. I start on the ground, with the feet, and work up, slowly defining the body, hour by hour, day after day. Each time I work on this body, which will eventually have a face, pupils, and an implied persona, I have a different, unique combination of encounters with the human object influencing me – a previous student critique, a BBC radio broadcast, the Brahms 3rd Piano Concerto, the recollection of a stranger‟s gait, my latest, seemingly brilliant epiphany on Art, my sons‟ latest perplexing questions, etc. Throughout this process and in the finished work, I am as certain that the implied persona that has emerged through months of this attention has been defined by it, as I am that it will eventually become a fragmented piece of insignificant, dusty junk. Or maybe not.” -Doug Jeck
Below is a short video clip of Doug Jeck and Christine Golden working on head sculptures similar to the ones we are working on now in class. Scroll down to the bottom of the site and click the video to play.
