Jacki Orr

Laizer Eyes

My work attempts to communicate the dichotomies in meaning and nonsense, humor and tragedy, beauty and the unsightly, and ultimately life and death. I like to tell stories about people existing in worlds where misfortune is just around the corner and there is humor in the direst of circumstances. I want my work to become a site for discourse on the idea of the joke and the irony of the hyper-hypocritical world in which we live where nothing and everything is sacred and available for consumption.

The themes and imagery I use are chosen for their abilities to convey the sarcasm in the delicate balance between comedy and calamity. Bright bold colors are used as an invitation, while the trustworthiness of instructional imagery is used incorrectly to impart the story and lend an air of absurdity, rather than to initiate or educate.

I use my work to challenge the notion that one has to strive for happiness at all costs while avoiding the darker matters that are intrinsic and universal. I hope to explore the idea that guilt and pleasure and humor cannot exist without their counterparts. And that the absurd is just as relevant and equally important to our world as the reasonable. The images become ruminations about gratification, suffering and the difficult hilarity of being.