Inside VEX

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                                                       I’m Jen LaBean, the artist behind VEX — The Thought Virus.

I make art as a kind of therapy for the chaos in my brain and in the world around me. Creating gives that chaos somewhere to go. It helps me focus, quiet the noise, and find a little stillness inside it.  I’m deeply drawn to nature and to the place we occupy within it. The seasons speak to me: growth, abundance, decay, death, and eventually renewal. They are ordinary, unavoidable parts of being alive, yet somewhere along the way I think we’ve become disconnected from those cycles. We especially seem determined not to look too closely at death until we have no choice.
 

                                                                                    My work looks anyway.
 

VEX lives somewhere in that uncomfortable space between beautiful and unsettling, funny and sad, familiar and strange. I work across ceramics, traditional and digital art, creating everything from tiny, sculpted objects to larger pieces, but the medium is secondary to the idea.

I want to make things that reward a second look.

Maybe you notice something you missed the first time. Maybe a piece makes you laugh today and hits completely differently the next time you encounter it. Maybe it leaves you with a question I never intended you to ask.

I don’t necessarily want to answer that question for you.
 

I believe we have to embrace some of the chaos if we’re ever going to find real peace within it.
 

VEX is where I explore that idea.