The Artist: Jackie Matisse
"I make and fly kites to play with color and line in the sky. My kites play games with the light, hide and seek with the clouds. They push and pull on the wind. They challenge the birds. My hand grows longer and longer until I feel I am somehow in contact with that immensity into and out of which all things come and go. The kite itself is a reference to the human: so fragile and yet so strong. It is also a reference to constant movement, sinuous movement, the movement of dreams and childhood. A child on the street rarely walks in a straight line. It plays while it goes, in and out, around and about. That is what birds in flight do. That is what my kites do. I wish to create "sky works" however ephemeral. Kites are an instrument for this. They put line and color into the sky and sculpt the air. They play game of freedom."
-Jackie Matisse
The granddaughter of Henri Matisse and the stepdaughter of Marcel Duchamp, Jackie Matisse makes kites that are launched into the air, submerged underwater, or summoned in virtual reality.
"Since the 1970's, Jackie Matisse has joined with other kinetic (kiter) artists to define their sky and sea works-historically, as part of a 2,500-year-old tradition that starts in China as participatory/kinetic/performance art. She is a significant presence in the artworld: the keeper of the Duchamp archives, an artist nourished and even influenced by her legendary forebears, and a spirited orignial in her own right. Suzi Gablik has said that "Jackie Matisse's art is exquisitely cosmic with its strange wild fluttering of freedom that is like a star falling to earth."