J.J. McKracken

Focusing on the Living Experience—making & consuming, loss, the passage of time—J.J. McCracken constructs immersive installations and works with local communities at the grassroots level. McCracken’s landscapes are composed of earth materials and activated by sound, smell, taste, and living models that move through them, focused on tasks they’ve been assigned. Sometimes, repeating cycles of productive activity yield accumulation—and then things fall apart. Other times, consumption is incessant but drones on, unable to satisfy. In McCracken’s work, there is (so far) always a foil for the notion of achievement, and there is (so far) always a reflection of the cycle of life. She is based in Mt. Rainer, MD and is starting a project this summer about rainwater harvesting working with artist Patrick McDonough and the municipal government.