Focus: Jenni Mac

Who are you and where are you from?
I am Jenni Mac, and this is my left thumb.

What is it you do?
I am fortunate enough to fix breakfast every morning. Before, after and during that I make drawings, songs, poems and performances.

How long have you been doing it?
I had a feeling early on and it all went from there. I forgot how to draw for years, then remembered in late 2020. I am a recovering diarist and writing poems is my inherent vice in lieu of that habit – that ended/began now around fifteen years back. With music I ebb and flow muscularly, but I’ve been singing since I found a voice somewhere in the mid-1990s. I am part of Perhaps Now performance troupe, formed 2023, and now I have six sets of collarbones.

What inspires you?
Rhythm. Beauty. Fluctuating prices of gasoline. Precarity. Tenderness. Low quality American Mustard. Good paintings. Bad dreams. My cat, Penny.

Tell us about your work.
Across the things I do, I seek to fool with expectation – I want to mesmerise with curiosity, the uncanny, & chance. I make character of object, of sentiment, of dissonance, and introduce these characters as a strange and fascinating relative. The unfamiliar is always familiar if you consider it properly. l/logic, contemplation. An impossibly wet rubber hand to everyday absurdity, coping mechanisms & the traditions of the surreal.  

What have you got coming up in the future?
My book ‘I Watch a Fish Die in the 1950s’ is coming out on July 29th, published by Kulvert Press. I am frequently in lots of different places. In August, I and the Troupe will be in Scotland making new work. In September I will be in Yorkshire a while making an album, then the Netherlands making a clown show. I have plans to perform from the book in Bristol. Brighton, and London, but dates of these shows are tbc.

Where can people find out more about you?
Any and all are welcome to find an early internet rendition of a website at www.jennimac.hotglue.me, can follow my whereabouts on Instagram via @gotohell_jm, and can consider the book via www.kulvertbooks.com/