I'm an artist living
in San Francisco, on a wooded hillside overlooking the Farallon Islands. Redtail hawks soar overhead and sometimes perch outside the studio window, and raccoons, possums and skunks are nocturnal visitors. And this is in the middle of the city!
Here's my 3D collage "Rust", one of the works on view in the invitational exhibit at Menlo College called "A Collage Centennial". Each of ten artists have several works on display, in a wide range of approaches to collage and assemblage. The other exhibitors are: Martha Brewer, Peter Foley, Susan Friedman, Inge Infante, Josie Lorca, Michael Pauker, Julia Nelson-Gal, Deborah Solomon and Linda Stinchfield. The exhibit runs through December 12 and is open to the public during business hours in the Administration Building on the campus.
Several of us will take part in a panel discussion on Monday evening, November 18 at 7:00 p.m. Menlo College is at 1000 El Camino Real, Atherton, CA. On Monday, the exhibit will remain open until 7:00 in the Administration Building, which is the first building inside the campus on the right. The entrance is on the opposite side of the building from the parking lot. The discussion will be in the Russell Center, right next door.
I've been wanting a place to show work that doesn't easily fit into my website. Some pieces are experimental, or one-of-a-kind, or things I don't want to part with but would like to share. Some have back stories that are too long-winded or too frivolous for the website, but that I still like to tell. For the official story, visit the website: www.janetjonesfineart.com.
I also have been wanting a way to share news about artists and exhibits my readers may enjoy. I hope longtime followers will forgive me for keeping older and older posts, but they're favorites of mine that I enjoy revisiting.
The one that got away
I finished this piece just in time for a group show, and it sold before I'd had time to live with it. It's the first part of a quotation from Picasso: "Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth." For a closer look, just click on the image. I still have the companion piece, with this rather snarky quote from Ad Reinhart: "Art is Art. Everything else is everything else."
Unexpected treasure
I recently visited my favorite aunt, who is 97 and sharp as ever, and saw a hand of solitaire laid out on her table. Years of use had worn down the printing, and the cards themselves, in a way I found both beautiful and touching. She had another deck equally soft and comfortable to use, so she let me bring these home to incorporate into my work. You'll notice that the upper-right and lower-left corners are worn down from years of shuffling .
The death of the printed word
With newspapers in their death throes, and Kindle replacing physical books, it seems only a matter of time before actual books become obsolete. I call these tiny 3D pieces "Reliquaries". They're partly made from the spines of books from which all the pages have been ripped. Some include the string with which the books were sewn. They're about two inches square, in six-inch black shadow boxes. This one is in The Altered Book Show and auction at Marin MOCA.
LETTERPRESS, BREAKING ALL THE RULES
Letterpress printing has a long and distinguished history, and I have been privileged to know and observe many fine printers at their work. So it was with some trepidation that I undertook to improvise a way to do a series of works by letterpress printing on my etching press. I took a monoprinting approach to printing wood and metal type, working with layering and transparency, combined with the tactile quality inherent to letterpress printing. As in monoprinting, I wanted to take advantage of chance and happy accidents, and at the same time pay tribute to the innate beauty of the type itself. I printed the piece above on a page from an old Gaelic bible. The eye was printed digitally from a scanned image from a type specimen book.
