Artwork placed in public spaces needs to do more than look good on a wall. It should hold up to movement, changes in light, distance, and hold its own space in an environment with heavy traffic, where not everyone will stop and study it. You want it to read quickly and still have an element of surprise. Jenna Krypell’s work is built for this. It’s precise, dimensional, and finished. It catches your eye and reflects that back to you. It acts like a strong object in the room, moving along with you.
When you step into Jenna Krypell’s studio, you’re immediately hit with warm sunlight pouring through large windows and the smell of fresh-cut wood. Works in progress line the walls, and the whole space feels closer to a design studio than a traditional painting setup. Unpainted cuttings are stacked neatly alongside samples, tests, and paint brushes. Everything is in motion, but still controlled.
Jenna’s process starts more like a designer. “I get a lot of inspiration from everyday life, like walking around different buildings, architecture, colors, sunsets, everything, movements of things, music.” She’ll sketch fast, then refine in Illustrator, with “a lot of… trial and error,” because what she sees in her head may not always translate at first. Some ideas click in a week, others take time, and that range is part of what makes the finished work feel so resolved.
Once the form is locked, she treats fabrication as its own stage. Jenna calls it her “canvas making process,” cutting the shaped panels on a CNC router and bringing them back to the studio for finishing.
The mirror part is not always decided at the beginning. Sometimes it comes later, once she’s living with the shape and seeing what it needs. “I don’t always know what colors or if I’m going to put mirror on it,” she said, because she’s often reusing forms in different ways and letting the surface choices steer the final direction. When she does bring mirror in, it changes how the work behaves in a public setting. “No matter where you put that piece or where you move, it always moves with you.” The light shifts, the reflections change, and the piece stays active without asking anyone to stop and study it.
The kinetic energy you feel when you enter is due to two things: her personality and her workflow. As we were setting up to start an interview with Jenna, she immediately went into sharing how she works on multiple pieces at a time, allowing paint to dry on one and moving to the next. Bouncing from work to work, but in a systematic and structured way. “I usually work on 4 or 5 pieces at a time… I need to bounce… for things to settle and for me to look at it, live with it, and make sure I’m okay with it.” She walked me around the studio, showing each piece that was currently in progress. Her presence can be felt in the studio. She knows what she wants to create, and the intention is very much there.
When putting together this exhibit at Gallery 85, curator Isabelle George saw a piece by Jenna in a public office space and immediately knew she had to be a part of this show. Contours is a very fitting name for Jenna’s work. She’s influenced by motion, structure, shape, and form. It’s form that carries an emotional hit for her. She shared how her father, being a jewelry designer, influenced her. “I grew up being aware of different forms, and how it affects people, and people react to beauty, and to me, form is beauty. When you talk about forms and contour, it’s always involving movement and dimension and capturing that.”
Skyfall by Jenna Krypell
Jenna has three pieces in Contours. The first is Skyfall. “Skyfall is a piece that is kind of a domino effect. It’s supposed to be very dimensional. Like three dominoes coming together or falling down.” It’s interesting that she uses both of those ways to describe the piece. Three cut mirror shapes reflect back how you perceive them. Next to the cut mirrors is a painting of a sky. “With the painting of the sky, I’m trying to bring the viewer into another world and bring them through a portal where they can stop and be taken into a beautiful and happier world that’s inspiring. Like a beautiful memory.”
Echoes, Softly is a shift for Jenna. She describes it as more sketched, using ink to create thin lines that require you to step back and view the work at a distance. “When you move back its a very moody, cloud-like feeling, but upclose its quick gestural movements.” The shape, or form, is one that Jenna revisits often. Ribbon-like in silhouette, when you step back and view it, the ink painting starts to feel like wind. You can almost feel it moving around the space. This piece also has cut mirror shapes, adding to that effect of winding and breathing through the room.
Echoes, Softly by Jenna Krypell
Third, and maybe the most graphic of her works in the show, is Leather. “It’s made up of linear movements that have this peeking hold in the center. In a way is shows tension between these lines that are coming down. I love the aspect of the gesture of opening your hand, and pushing those lines open and having this tension between the piece and the form.” It leaves room for the viewer, like a peekaboo moment into another world. With this piece, however, the opening remains just that. She doesn’t paint the answer. She leaves the interpretation open.
Leather by Jenna Krypell
Jenna was born and raised in New York, and she studied painting and communication design at Syracuse University. She describes being pushed toward mass consumer product design and realizing pretty quickly that she didn’t care about that goal. She wanted to make things for specific people, on their own terms, even if that meant stepping away from traditional product thinking and taking the materials and tools back into fine art. You can see that in the finished pieces. They have a resolved quality that feels professionally crafted, yet still original and intentional. You understand the discipline that shows up in her work. The added materials and resin details feel placed precisely where they should be, to support the structure and the idea.
In a public setting, you need to place work that holds up visually just as well as physically. The reason Jenna’s pieces work so well is that they do both. Visually, they are strong shape elements that draw your attention. They reflect the viewer, the shifting light, and the shadows. Physically, they are crafted with extreme attention to detail and built with discipline and knowledge that shows. They sit well inside Contours. The show is about line, shape, and form. You don’t need to get it. Each time you pass by, you’ll notice something new and look again.
Written by David Dempsey, Director, Media Services & Content
