Posts tagged artexhibit
Spring Sale + New Paintings
Original watercolor painting by Jennifer Farina

This painting is one of ten that I’ve just added to my site. Plus, right now I’m offering 10% off all paintings. Use the promo code: SPRINGSALE at checkout through the end of March.

Woven into breath—
the strands of me from before,
made of sky and earth.

This set of paintings and poems reflect the reading and woods walking I’ve done so far this year. Thinking about the connection with nature, other people, and ourselves. The writers in the photo of my stack of books below show that living is losing and regaining that connection over and over again. Pain comes from it, but beauty, too.

Collection of poetry and fiction books.
September sale.

This summer, a friend took a portrait of me at my desk. It's adjacent to the painting table and large tackboard that make up my home studio. The portrait reminded me of something that at first I couldn't place...

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Then the image popped into my head: a painting by Matisse called Interior with Etruscan Vase. It's been a favorite of mine for years. I like that the woman is gazing back at the viewer, completely at ease and confident. Her plants, book, and objects in vivid color and shape surrounding her. Discovering this image in my late teenage years was a revelation.

Interior with Etruscan Vase, Henri Matisse, 1940 | The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio

Interior with Etruscan Vase, Henri Matisse, 1940 | The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio

Since then, photographs and paintings of artists and writers in their studios or at their desks always interest me. Seeing all of the little details of the everyday space where creativity takes place. An art teacher I once had referred to Paul Klee as a 'kitchen table artist.' The small scale of his paintings was in direct relation to the space that he had to make them. But it doesn't matter. Seeing a Paul Klee painting in person is just as enthralling as any monumentally-scaled painting or sculpture. The imprint made by a human hand is still a portal that can transport.

There are a handful of images that come to my mind all the time of artists and writers at work: Frida Kahlo, often confined to her bed, painting; Anne Sexton at her typewriter (in a pose similar to Matisse's woman with the Etruscan vase); Sylvia Plath, with her books lined up behind her on shelves or her typewriter precariously perched wherever she was; Wendell Berry in his work overalls with his legs up on his desk looking outside through a wall of windows; Toni Morrison smiling at her desk at Random House; E.B. White on a wooden bench in his simple shack with a window opened to water; Jay DeFeo, who made a painting in her apartment that ended up blocking out most of the light and had to be hoisted out through the window when she completed it.

It might be that the spaces shown in these images are usually so ordinary. Not much is needed to think and start to make something. To get lost in the portal that your own space allows you.

I've just updated my web gallery with a dozen new paintings made over the past few months. Plus, through September 30th I’m offering 20% off all paintings on my site. Use the promo code: SEPTEMBER at checkout.

Permanence and Change

Exhibiting my work is a new experience for me. It means a lot to have people see and consider my paintings and the writing that goes with them. At the moment, I have two paintings hanging in an exhibit around the theme of Permanence and Change at Concordia University here in Ann Arbor. The exhibit started on April 3 with an artist reception and will be up until May 8, 2019. Please go and check it out if you can, the Kreft Center Gallery is a beautiful space and there is a lot of interesting art in the show. Concordia also has a nice campus situated on the Huron River—and spring is really bursting here in Ann Arbor—it’s a great time to visit.

Just about all of my work is about the theme of Permanence and Change. The two paintings that were selected for the show specifically address the longing for personal connection—and the attempt to understand that connection in spite of the inherent ambiguities of the human heart.

Concordia University Ann Arbor
4090 Geddes Rd.
Ann Arbor, MI 48105

2019 Kreft National Juried Exhibition
April 3 – May 8
The gallery is open to the public, free of charge.
Tuesday – Friday | 12:00 pm - 4:00 pm
Saturday and Sunday | 1:00 pm – 5:00 pm.

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Luck and beauty.

Looking up from the bottom
to where the tops of trees
meet and reach for each other
against the sky—one crow
crosses over, looking.

Tiny moss is starting to grow
and sprout despite the
April cold.

It says:

I am no forlorn angel,
I am luck,
I am beauty,
and I grow
without knowing the end.

Moss sprouting leaves on the floor of my favorite forest.

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Now on exhibit!
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Permanence and change. This is the theme of Concordia University’s 2019 Kreft National Juried Exhibition and I’m so pleased to have had two paintings selected to appear in this show. I think I can easily say that most of my work relates to this theme in one way or another.

It is up now through May 8 with an artist’s reception on Friday, April 5, from 7 - 9pm. Please come and see it and say hello this Friday at the Ann Arbor campus if you can.

Concordia University Ann Arbor
4090 Geddes Rd.
Ann Arbor, MI 48105

2019 Kreft National Juried Exhibition
April 3 – May 8
The gallery is open to the public, free of charge.
Tuesday – Friday | 12:00 pm - 4:00 pm
Saturday and Sunday | 1:00 pm – 5:00 pm.

Reception for the Artists: April 5, 7-9 pm
Kreft Center Gallery
Free and Open to the Public

Learn more about the Kreft Center Gallery here.

In small living things...

In small living things
weight is carried like air,
in sky and water.

View up close in the gallery.

It is March—finally nearing spring—though it still feels like the middle of winter in Michigan with snow, ice, and bitter winds most every day lately. One day this past week though I had a mourning dove just outside my window at dusk making his call. It was so loud it startled me—I heard him before I saw him. He kept at it for a few minutes, eyeing me as I peeked through the blinds. The next morning he was out there again (or, had been out there all night sleeping), balanced on a rail. This time at least the rising sun was just starting to shine on him. His soft grayish brown body looked like velvet, his chest puffed out against the cold. Watching me again as I peeked out at him he made a small step sideways.

I’ve read about mourning doves and know they can fly incredibly fast and straight, but that morning he was still and silent as the sun rose, his instincts telling him things will change soon. My thought was to write a poem for him: the tiny bones of his ribcage that create the space for air to pass through as he practices his call to find the mate that hasn’t arrived yet and has no awareness that he is on this balcony, calling to the setting sun.

To me, every small living thing represents this kind of mystery and majesty. A whole complex life that we can observe and document but really only guess as to what it feels like to live it.

Photos taken from inside the Matthaei Botanical Gardens. My exhibit there continues until March 24, 2019.

At the conservatory.

New snow fills the field.
The warm observatory,
full of mystery.

Full of mystery,
a life lived underwater,
koi like orange silk.

Koi like orange silk,
float like the dark Milky Way,
a soft universe.

A soft universe,
like a calm yet wild creature,
new snow fills the field.

The conservatory is a transformative place. Cold winter days are the perfect time to visit and get rejuvenated…and while you’re there, take a look at my exhibit of 40 paintings, The Mind Bloom.

University of Michigan Matthaei Botanical Gardens

The fish.

On display in The Mind Bloom exhibit at the Matthaei Botanical Gardens.

View up close in the gallery.

The Mind Bloom exhibit.

I've been asked to exhibit 40 paintings at the University of Michigan Matthaei Botanical Gardens in Ann Arbor, MI. Titled, "The Mind Bloom," this exhibit runs from January 12 - March 24, 2019.

Exhibit Poster

The UM Matthaei Botanical Gardens has been one of my favorite places to visit for as long as I can remember. It represents thriving life and possibility. I am thankful to have this exhibit of my work in a place that is so meaningful to me.

The paintings in this exhibit were made over the past couple of years. I worked on them just about every day, in the morning or at night. Over time, the confluence of ideas that the paintings and words represented became familiar and connected. Themes and interests repeated and were deepened through my daily exploration.

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Titling the exhibit, “The Mind Bloom”, after a specific painting in the collection, seemed like the perfect expression of this work. Always inspired by nature, and combined with thought, memory, poetry, feeling—truly a bloom that is full of vigor and charged with all of the possibility of being alive every day.

University of Michigan
Matthaei Botanical Gardens
1800 N. Dixboro Rd.
Ann Arbor, MI 48105

The Mind Bloom Exhibit
January 12 – March 24, 2019
Daily 10 am - 4:30 pm
Wednesdays until 8 pm
Free admission

https://mbgna.umich.edu/event/the-mind-bloom/