Review

A profile of a Kansas City artist, architect, and designer

In 2005, Jack Rees worked at a desk in his father’s studio a few feet from the crib where he had slept as a baby.

“I was 52-years-old,” says Rees, “and I realized that I had traveled all of seven feet.”

The journey he has made to cover those seven feet, however, has been fueled by an expansive passion to learn about architecture, philosophy, literature, linguistics, carpentry, writing, art, and the myriad ways in which these disciplines converge to tell universal narratives. At every turn, he was inspired by his teachers. He says that is one of his best talents — choosing the most incredible teachers.

Jack Martz Rees, Jr., was born in 1955 at St. Luke’s Hospital in Kansas City, Missouri, to Jack and Joan Martz Rees, who both grew up in the Midwest. They had met earlier in New York City, where Jack Rees, Sr., was working at Bamberger’s department store following his graduation from Pratt University in Brooklyn, and Joan Martz was working as a photographer’s assistant, living on Park Avenue. They met on a double date, which incidentally, ended up in marriage for both couples. After marriage, Jack and Joan researched cities that would be equally conducive to raising a family and creating a successful interior design business. Between Houston and Kansas City, they chose Missouri.

Jack Rees in his backyard studio. Image: still from video interview with Janell Meador, produced by Benjamin Meade

Jack Rees, Jr., who also goes by j.m.rees, associates his aesthetic with his early exposure to what he calls “dusty elegance.” His first teachers, mom and dad, took Jack and his brother, Michael, on many driving trips, always stopping at antique stores.

“As children we hated it,” says Rees. “But at some point, we absolutely began to love it.”

Many of the antique dealers lived in fabulous old houses in run-down neighborhoods, filled with beautiful antique furniture and collectibles. So began his interest in juxtaposing opposites: the elegant with the rustic, the new with the old, the polished with the rough. A touchstone for Rees has always been the quote by Sir Francis Bacon: “There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.”

Jack Rees’s early education was at Pembroke Hill School, where he was inspired by art teacher, Don Adams; music teacher, Mel Bishop; and science teacher, Jerry Watson.

“I had a focus problem,” says Rees. “I was a serial enthusiast.”

He explored photography, philosophy, history, and was involved in glee club, musical productions, soccer, hockey, diving, and track: his early dreams always included architecture and art. Diagnosed with dyslexia in junior high, Rees struggled academically until his mother discovered Lorraine Wolf, who tutored Rees in coping strategies for three years. Armed with these strategies, he began to excel, making top grades.

After graduating from Pembroke (where he received the Art Cup his senior year), Rees chose to attend Connecticut College, New London, Connecticut, (formerly a school for girls — “And the odds were still good,” he says). At CC he studied philosophy, linguistics, and Russian literature, but left before receiving a degree.

“I realized that I had not read enough,” says Rees. “I decided to get a job and read.”

He moved to New York City and started working in the design department for the prestigious Jack Lenor Larsen textile design firm, where he was also the director of show room display design.

j.m.rees, "Optical algorithm G78," casein and lacquer on antique pine, 23¼" x 42¼", 2010, is part of "quasi-objects of a mental kind," on display at the Epsten Gallery, May 16 — June 27, 2010. Photo: E.G. Schempf, courtesy of the artist

Rees returned to Kansas City in 1979 and started a construction company with his brother. Rees believes that architects should be generalists and should have experience in all fields connected to architecture. He built furniture, remodeled and built houses, frequently working with his father’s interior design business. He was an uncommon hands-on architect, often working 80-hour weeks, and he made a career out of working with people who had been told by other contractors that what they wanted could not be done — Jack Rees would do it.

A year later, he was back in New York, where he spent two years studying at The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, and in 1982, came home again and began to work more closely with his father, sharing an office with him while running his own separate company. He says his father was, most importantly, a resource for knowledge.

Upon discovering poet, essayist, and University of Texas Professor Fred Turner, Rees was lured to Dallas for further study. He wanted to learn how to become a writer, but discovered that there was no learning to write.

“Those who write are writers, those who don’t write are not,” says Rees.

He began a six-year journey following his nose through every library that interested him. He graduated magna cum laude from UTD with a degree in literary studies, then went on earn his master's degree in 1996 in science and architectural studies from the University of Texas, Austin.

Interdisciplinary academic work has been important to Rees throughout his education. A big part of his aesthetic has to do with bringing disparate objects together. Rees’s solo exhibition, quasi-objects of a mental kind, at the Epsten Gallery May 16 through June 27, 2010, serves as a cogent example of this process: it brings together sculpture made of recycled steel angle iron, lumber, and oil-based paint, and UV ink on polycarbonate; computer-based digital drawing; a limited-edition artist book with letterpress print cover; and two-dimensional works of casein, oil stain, and varnish on antique pine. He has a particular love affair with wood that begins with the fascination he experiences when it is sliced open to reveal its interior grain pattern. He calls it an arrested flow: “The growth of a particular tree is exposed and each one is like no other.”

Jack Rees lives with his wife, Hayley, in a home on Summit Street in Kansas City, Missouri, that had neither a roof on the north side nor windows on the south when they bought it. Reclaiming the house and making it their own has been and continues to be a collaborative project for the couple.

In his work, be it architecture, carpentry, or fine art, Jack Rees creates with a passion, “to design things that improve with age,” he says. “I want my work to actually look better as it ages than it does when it is new.”

Video interview and studio tour, produced by Benjamin Meade:

Notes:
A version of this article also appears in the arts section of PresentMagazine.com and is shared by agreement.

A review of j.m.rees: quasi-objects of a mental kind by Joe Miller is also on ereview.org.

Rees is giving a lecture June 23 at 3 p.m. at the gallery and will be there June 27 from noon to 4 p.m. to visit. See the Review weekly calendar digest for more information.

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