Jay Sylvester spent his youth exploring the forests and fields of New England, assembling complicated, mildly dangerous forts and secret shelters for his friends. This primitive world- building set him on an artistic path that would bear fruit years later. Studying at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn in the 80s, he shifted his focus to the urban landscape around him, finding inspiration and materials in the cast-off ephemera and detritus of the city.
Coming full circle, Sylvester now divides his time between his studios on rural Long Island and the deserts of Coachella Valley where he sources materials and inspiration from nature, including Bittersweet, Honeysuckle and Wild Wisteria vines, Sagebrush branches, Palm bark and Cholla wood.
The artist’s practice and product continually reference the timeless existential complexity of the relationship between man and the surrounding natural world: the hubristic desire to control something too big to grasp, the weight of entropy, an acceptance of mortality, the dynamics of survival, the tension between oneness and separateness, and the endless beauty and overwhelming grandeur of it.
