Jantje Visscher is an American mixed-media artist and teacher. Her work involves painting, printmaking, photography, and sculpture.[1] Visscher uses geometry and mathematics to explore the dynamics of perception and optical effects through the use of nontraditional mixed media.[2] She lives and works in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and is active in the Women's Art Resources of Minnesota Mentor Program and the Traffic Zone Center for Visual Art.[3] [4] Visscher is best known for hard-edge abstraction and minimalism within her scientific approach and exploration of perception and mathematics.
Jantje Visscher graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio.[5] She later earned her M.F.A in Fine Arts, Painting, and Printmaking from the University of California Berkeley in 1962. After graduate school, Visscher returned to Minnesota to take care of her family. In 1973, she connected to other female artists in Minnesota and helped found WARM.
Visscher is one of the founding members of WARM, a feminist artist collective based in Minnesota. The collective became an important aspect of Visscher's practice and career She now serves as a mentor in WARM's Mentor Program, which pairs emerging artists with professional artists. Her philosophy as a mentor includes the constant revision of goals and refocusing one's daily life and artistic practices. She strives to help protegees develop basic career skills like marketing, drawing, and Photoshop, to help them become successful practicing artists. As a mentor, Visscher encourages philosophical discussion, the refinement of technical skills, and a regular schedule for creating art. Visscher mentored Maryellen Murphy from 2013 to 2014 as a part of the program, as well as Kate Vinson from 2015 to 2016, participating in the final capstone exhibitions associated with the program. She exhibited her piece, Capital in the final exhibition Landing and Launching in 2016, and exhibited Making Your Wings in the 2014 final exhibition Beyond the Surface.
Visscher is also one of the founding members of Traffic Zone Center for Visual Arts, which provides high-quality and affordable studio spaces for artists. Visscher has also exhibited her work through the Center, including in the 22nd Annual Spring Open Studio and a solo show, Motion, both in 2017. Motion featured collaged prints that display her fascination with the “constant motion of everything in the universe”.[6]
Visscher uses various techniques and processes to achieve nonobjective representations. Her style emerged by using geometric principles to create intuitive expression through repetition, limited color palettes, and grids. Visscher introduces a shifting relationship between figure and ground, as her experimental constructions invite various perceptions and illusions from viewers. Her work is reminiscent of the natural sciences and architecture, and she often uses radiating lines to intersect grids, mimicking moire patterns to create dramatic weaving, swirling, and swelling forms.[2]
Her work Beautiful Lie Landscapes features diptych photographs of natural landscapes and waves that create an optical illusion when disoriented. Visscher “never gave the subject a thought until she glanced at a photo of a wave a couple of years ago and realized it was upside down but looked right”, beginning her curiosity with orientation and perception.[7] In a solo show titled Drawings in Light, Visscher's work explored “the idea of using a force of nature and light energy, as a drawing material”.[8]