Jen Stark (American, b. 1983) creates paintings, sculptures, murals, animations and installations built around repeating drip patterns and optical illusions that evoke plant growth, fractals and sacred geometry.,,Working across paper, wood, metal and paint, she has extended the practice into interactive digital projections and blockchain editions.Her work draws on the Op Art of Bridget Riley and Marina Apollonio and on the Finish Fetish movement of 1960s Los Angeles.
Born in Miami, Florida, Stark earned a BFA in fibers with a minor in animation from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2005 and lives and works in Los Angeles.,Her early sculptures were built by hand-cutting stacks of colored construction paper, a technique that became a hallmark of her practice before she began working with wood, metal and computer-aided fabrication.,In 2019, her solo exhibition “Dimensionality” at Joshua Liner Gallery in New York filled the space with layered paper, wood and metal sculptures exploring optical illusions, the Fibonacci sequence and Riemannian geometry.,In 2021, she staged “Cascade”, a 6,000-square-foot immersive installation of interactive projections, three-dimensional mapped environments, murals and sculptures at the William Vale Hotel in Brooklyn.
During Cascade, Stark auctioned a series of NFTs from the exhibition and launched a social token to support the show's community.Her digital work Multiverse sold on the blockchain for 150 ETH in March 2021, making her the first female artist to reach the NFT platform Foundation's top ten highest-selling creators.,Later that year she released Vortex, a generative collection of 1,000 algorithmically generated outputs on Art Blocks inspired by geodes, evolution and sacred geometry translated into code.,In 2023, Stark and Sarah Zucker created blockchain editions responding to works in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's permanent collection for the project Remembrance of Things Future, curated by the blockchain consultancy Cactoid Labs, with proceeds supporting the museum's Art and Technology Lab.
Stark has painted murals at Facebook's Menlo Park headquarters, Miami International Airport and Hard Rock Stadium in Florida.In 2025, her animated piece Cosmic Cascade appeared on the Sphere in Las Vegas as part of its XO Artist program.Her Art Blocks project Vortex was shown on an interactive touchscreen in the 2024 group exhibition “Electric Op” at the Buffalo AKG Art Museum.Stark's work is held in the collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art and the Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami, and was included in the Smithsonian's 2012 exhibition “40 Under 40: Craft Futures”.,,
