Artborne Magazine July 2016 | Page 17

Jordan Senarens by Jonathan Yubi It’s 2015. I arrive early to a Glenn Grishkoff lecture at the University of Central Florida. Too early it seems. The room is all but empty, save for Glenn in the front preparing his brushes for the coming lecture, and Jordan. I find my way to a seat, ignoring the empty ones, and place my bottom on the chair inches away from Jordan Senarens. I introduce myself. She doesn’t seem interested in making conversation, but she humors me nonetheless. I find she has a studio space in the room adjacent to the one we are in. I calmly continue with the conversation, even after I discover she’s responsible for the pieces I’ll soon come to know as the Diffracting Series. I fall in love — not with her, mind you — but with her work. It has an air of simple elegance, and complexities I can’t comprehend. She is, after all, a recent transfer from the biology department. Over the next several months I run into Jordan on campus, as I’m so prone to do anytime I want someone to be my friend (a ceaseless campaign of ‘random encounters’). She relents, and allows an interview. I believe she’s finally comfortable, so I confess I’ve been slaughtering the pronunciation of her last name. that So your father, obviously a big influence on your life. How about your mother. Was she involved in any sort of art? She’s crafty. But she always supported my decision to be an artist. I got a lot of pushback from her brother. He was like, “I would never let my daughter be an art major.” She said, “If she thinks she can do it, she’ll do it.” So I always had a lot of support from everyone in my family. That’s interesting though. I’ve always been very interested in your decision for a career change. Can you tell us a little about that? About what you were doing before, and why you decided to move into this. I think I decided I wanted to be an art major when I was in middle school. So I was always set on that and then before I really found what I wanted to do in art, I was panicked all the time thinking I wasn’t gonna make it work. And I think my biggest panic was my sophomore left: detail from Destruction of Habitat, acrylic on canvas below: Variable Space 1, acrylic on canvas Open curtains, enter scene. Senarens, where’s from? I think it’s Cuban. of location with marker, but they were real places. This one is imagined. The other one I did isn’t imagined, it’s from photographs. name Cuban? You have Cuban descendants in your family? Yeah. Mother’s side, or father’s side? Father’s. Speaking of family, tell us a little bit about yourself. Well, I’m from Fort Lauderdale. My family.... I have a very small family. And my father moved to India, he was a landscape architect. I think that’s how I get a lot of my overall clarity of my landscapes. I make each piece of foliage, as an icon. So everything is perfect. And that’s how I remember all of his drawings when he was designing landscape. So I think I’m more influenced by him than I thought I was. That’s cool, I didn’t know your dad was a landscape architect. Yeah, so I did all of these drawings Orlando’s Art Scene 16