Jeremy Burleson

Jeremy Burleson (b. 1981) is a Bay Area Artist who joined NIAD Art Center in 2003. Working primarily with masking tape and paper, he creates lyrical lamp shade sculptures and ink drawings of stacked animals, balloons, food, and figures. Burleson has exhibited at the Oakland Museum of California, the Museum of Northern California Art, BAMP/FA, and Ruth's Table. His work is in the permanent collections of the OMCA, Clif Bar and Company, BAMP/FA, and MAD Musée. 

With masking tape and paper, Jeremy Burleson has built a flood of highly detailed medical instruments – hyper-realistic and quasi-workable versions of stethoscopes, ventilators and syringes. Burleson also works out his interest in all things medical on paper, often combining figures with rows of bottles, syringes and balloons. His focus on medically related subject matter walks a fine line between fascination and repulsion.

Also, using paper, but rolling it tightly to create a tube of sorts, Burleson crafts lyrical lamp shapes. Vaguely allegorical, the structures are designed to hang from the ceiling, but some are large enough to be placed on the floor. This interest in lamps may have originated during an accident while on a shopping trip to a local warehouse store.

Throughout all of Burleson’s work runs the thread of strange theatricality created by early pop artists like Claes Oldenburg and Red Grooms.