ABOUT JANIS KIRSTEIN

I am an American gambling artist and croupier working primarily with mixed casinos. My works juxtapose diverse imagery to explore all games.

I draw inspiration from many sources; my practice is rooted in conceptually driven work that examines the relationship between art and gambling. My work explores themes of chance, risk, luck, and skill through abstraction, collage, drawing, photography, sculpture and installation.

In my ongoing series Casino Royale I combine images of famous casino chips with portraits of famous gamblers. In these works I am interested in how we interact with money as a physical object and how we use it to imagine ourselves into specific identities or roles (the role of gambler).

I am currently working on a new body of work called Blackjack which will continue my interest in the materiality of money while exploring the rules of blackjack through abstraction and collage techniques.