Photo by Abby Nardo
Jacob Wick works across multiple disciplines to investigate the ways in which we relate to that which is all around us. Through sound, video, and performance, Wick works towards a process he terms “queering” – literally, a “making strange” of space by calling into question the power dynamics between people and their lived environments.
He was born in 1985 near Chicago, IL. He had the privilege of attending New Trier High School, where he was part of numerous Downbeat-award-winning ensembles. In 2003 he entered the Jazz Studies program at Purchase College, State University of New York, where he studied with Jon Faddis, who nursed him back to health after a year of being unable to play due to embouchure difficulties. While at Purchase, he was exposed to and began moving towards installation art, sound art, and interactive media, which he studied with artist Liz Phillips, and began working with choreographer Neil Greenberg‘s improvisation classes at the dance conservatory. He graduated magna cum laude in 2008.
As a composer and improviser, he has performed throughout the United States, as well as in Canada, Mexico, India, and assorted European locales, and has taught masterclasses at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, the College of Charleston, and McGill University. Wick currently leads two groups in New York – hungry cowboy and A Mown Lawn – and co-leads White Rocket, a trio with Dublin-based performer/composers Greg Felton and Seán Carpio, as well as performing with Jason Ajemian & the HighLife and Helado Negro. He also keeps one foot in Chicago, having recently established two collaborative trios there: Tres Hongos (with Frank Rosaly and Marc Riordan), and Kimmel/Moré/Wick. He has so far released four CDs: the first, an entirely improvised duo CD with drummer Andrew Greenwald (37:55 [2008]– Creative Sources); the second, with a collaborative trio White Rocket (White Rocket [2009]– on Diatribe); the third, an improvised CD-R with Kimmel/Moré/Wick (Tilting [2011] – Peira) ; and the fourth, with Tres Hongos (Where My Dreams Go To Die [2012] – Prom Night). He has also appeared on an EP with Helado Negro (Pasajero [2010] – Asthmatic Kitty) and on Jason Ajemian & the HighLife’s first three releases (Let Me Get That Digital [2010] – Sundmagi, Monsters & Animals [2010] – Sundmagi, Riding the Light into the Bird’s Eye [2011] – Sundmagi). His solo trumpet performance, swarm, has been performed throughout the US.
As a sound and video artist, Jacob Wick’s installations and videos have been shown at the DANK Haus (Chicago), Heaven Gallery (Chicago), ISSUE Project Room (Brooklyn), and the Atlantic Center for the Arts (Florida). He maintains a longstanding relationship with Chicago-based arts residency program Harold Arts, where he has been on staff and/or in residence every year since its inception in 2006, and has been an Associate Artist-in-Residence at the Atlantic Center for the Arts. In October 2009, he began a large-scale performance project entitled ROAD TRIP: drawing a perimeter of the united states, sponsored by Brooklyn-based arts service organization Fractured Atlas. Spanning a nearly three-month period, ROAD TRIP consisted of over 30 performances and collaborative projects with local and international artists and musicians throughout an 8000-mile loop around the United States and Canada.
Beginning in 2011, Wick became a leading contributor to Information Department, writing a variety of proposals and executing projects at the Transmodern Festival in Baltimore, at the EcoPoesis Symposium at the California College of the Arts, as well as a cross-country news-based project, What News. Later that year, he opened overca$h, a living room in West Oakland. Since its inception, overca$h has presented a number of events, including an Information Department-curated Lecture Series.
Jacob Wick currently lives in Oakland, CA, where he is pursuing an MFA at the California College of the Arts.
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