Artist Statement

I am an artist who photographs to gather evidence and to document what I build, falling squarely in line with conceptual art and the constructed image. Absence, loss, storytelling, and metaphor pervade my artwork and throughout the decades, four themes have emerged:

Time: Through transience and longevity, I mark it through inconsequential and universal means by placing our individual experiences in the timeline of the earth’s history.

Archiving: I am drawn to the (in)ability to keep something in perpetuity. Record keeping. Storage. Collections. Organization. Precision. Numbers. Archives have dominated my artwork since the early 2000s.

Water: In its liquid and frozen state, has prominently been featured since 2010. Nine years ago, I shifted to ice to explore the polar regions, creating an autobiographical chronology to be viewed alongside scientific fact in an era of environmental peril. I am drawn to the impermanence and fragility of ice, how it is preserved naturally and when humans intervene.

Edges and ends of the line: This interest took me to Antarctica and within 500 miles of the North Pole in the Svalbard Archipelago. It is now evident in telling stories at the edge of the chronology of time (most recently the bristlecone pine chronology, the eruption of Mt. Mazama, and the first ice core drilled at Camp Century which broke through the Greenland Ice Shield in 1966).

I am concurrently working on four series that are in various stages of development: Art Department (documenting 66 years from the perspectives of a student and professor, a father and a daughter); Autobiography (mundane objects as chronological markers that define a life), an ongoing collaboration at the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research regarding the dating of volcanic activity that formed Crater Lake; and I am researching the first ice core drilled through the Greenland ice sheet with the hope of visiting it in Denmark in 2027.

Bio:

As a conceptual artist with a longstanding interest in edges, borders, and topographical extremes, Jacinda Russell has examined the impacts of human-accelerated climate change in the polar regions since 2017. She works primarily in the mediums of photography, sculpture, installation, and bookmaking. Her artwork has been exhibited at numerous locations nationally and internationally including the southernmost place on earth, the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. Born in Idaho, she received her BFA from Boise State University in Studio Art and her MFA from the University of Arizona. She currently lives and works in Tucson, Arizona.

News:

2026 Language Erratics with Hannah Larrabee, University of Arizona Poetry Center, Tucson, AZ (August - December)

2026 Summer Social: Jacinda Russell and Hannah Larrabee on Art, Poetry, and Language Erratics, Century Room, Hotel Congress, Tucson, AZ (2 August, 4 PM)

2026 Two Lenses, One Place: Ekphrastic Responses to Climate Change with Hannah Larrabee and Jacinda Russell, Workshop at the University of Arizona Poetry Center, Tucson, AZ (30 July)

2026 Selections from The Postcard Collective: 2019-2026, Group exhibition curated by Monica Church, Vassar College Art Library, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, NY (July - October)

2026 Nightswimming, Group exhibition curated by Brian Hitselberger, The Weather Station, Lafayette, IN (March - May)

2026 Under the Sun, Group exhibition curated by Joseph Labate, Steinfeld Gallery, Tucson, AZ (March)

2026 On the Cold Edge: Creative Meditations on Svalbard, Regeneration: Environment, Art, Culture, Volume 1, Issue 2 (February)

2026 Silent Testimony with Brent Cole, Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research, Tucson, AZ (January - December)