Jack Poker: Beneath an Economy of Sky

Jack Poker is a Chicago-based artist whose paintings and sculptures examine memory and how it is tied to the history of a place. His experience in architectural reclamation inspired his current series of paintings, which depicts what happens to city blocks, suburban neighborhoods, and commercial sites during periods of transformation, specifically when those changes involve abandoned or demolished buildings. His work is the result of what has been removed from those structures, as well as what remains through objects found, observed, or inspired by these sites. From these possessions left behind and the totality of past and planned structures, Jack's paintings depict how histories, without context, are fragmented and distorted until the artist reconstructs them and the viewer gives them meaning. Before moving to Chicago in 1995, New Mexican-born Jack Poker spent his youth in Nebraska, Kansas, and Missouri. He studied history and anthropology at the University of Missouri-Columbia before moving to Seattle, Washington, where he divided his time between work and art. He lived in Alaska briefly, where he worked on a fishing boat in the Bering Sea. He participated in group shows in and around Chicago until 2004 but continued to paint and sculpt full-time, selling his work to private collectors. In 2011, he was forced to take a hiatus from painting after his studio, along with his belongings, were destroyed in a flood.