Jan Orzeck

Instagram: @jkorzeck
Website: in progress
 

Jan Karen Orzeck, born and still living in Brooklyn, has been making art and crafting all her life. She has studied at most of the major art schools in New York City. In her work life, she had dual careers as a social worker, and as a producer of educational materials for McGraw-Hill, Scholastic, and National Geographic. She is proud to be a 9/11 Recovery Worker and the mother of three. Upon retirement, she went back into artmaking with a vengeance. She had her first solo show at age 70, the culmination of a lifelong dream, and has been selected for other juried shows. Jan works mainly in collage/mixed media and studies different forms of papermaking. She identifies the award-winning children’s book author/illustrator Ezra Jack Keats as her major influence. Jan also admires illustrators N.C. Wyeth, Maurice Sendak, and Kay Nielsen, and the artists Käthe Kollwitz, Judy Chicago, Martha Rosler, and Wangechi Mutu. Like them, Jan’s work usually revolves around themes of social justice and the human condition, combining elements of pure design with the representational. She enjoys using text and the work of famous artists as collage elements, and often incorporates irony and humor in her artwork and their titles.