About the Emplacement series, Jill Downen states: "Drawing is the first form of expressivity, before verbal acquisition, to reach out and touch a surface in a way that leaves a mark. Drawing is the main artery that runs through my life’s work: the immediacy of thought, to make sensations and ideas visible. Drawing with plaster fits my sensibilities and physicality. After years of drawing with plaster on various grounds, including paper, I arrived at the conclusion that the plaster needed an architectural substrate. Wood lath brings the skeletal support and conceptual framework in a unified form. These materials allow me to erase with chisels and grinders, building up the surface and then taking it back down to the bones cyclically until the piece is resolved."

Jill Downen is an artist who works in sculpture, installation, and drawing. A critical event in their formative years, a lightning strike to the family home, imprinted a heightened awareness of the body, architecture, and temporality that would, in time, inform the core of their artistic practice. Their most recent work, a body of drawings made with plaster on plaster grounds, evolved from previous installations to embrace the potential of an empty wall as a site for contemplation. "My artwork makes a place for silence, subtlety, and sensitivity to perceptions. When one wonders, “Where am I?” symbolically or philosophically, my work offers a respite before returning to the speed of life with measured focus.