JENNY DAY
Okay with the Distortion
February 21 – April 6, 2024
PULL QUOTE
Misplaced animals stand as totemic witnesses to a world eroded by an accumulation of insults both large and small...Damaged landscapes, pulled apart, puzzled over, persevering with a litany of scars.
Biography
J E N N Y D A Y | | | biography
[lives & works - Santa Fe, NM ::: b. 1981]
JENNY DAY earned an MFA in Painting and Drawing from the University of Arizona, a BFA in Painting from the University of Alaska Fairbanks and a BA in Environmental Studies from the University of California Santa Cruz. Her exhibition record most recently includes the Phoenix Art Museum, Blue Star Art Museum, in San Antonio, TX, Arte Laguna in Venice, Italy, Czong Institute for Contemporary Art in Korea, and Elmhurst Museum in Chicago, IL. Day’s work has been supported by an Elizabeth Greenshields Grant in 2018, Contemporary Forum Artist Grant from the Phoenix Art Museum in 2017, a Barron Purchase Award in 2016 and through participation at the Ucross Foundation, the Jentel Foundation, Playa Foundation For The Arts, Kimmel Harding Nelson Art Center, and the Armory Art Center. Jenny Day lives and works in Santa Fe, New Mexico and is represented by Ferrara Showman Gallery.
STATEMENT
Needs More Wonder
Retreating from the stress and chaos of the last year, I created another landscape; populated by an army of friendly creatures. Here the burdens of coronavirus, climate change, and political division are dismissed by hot pink kittens that arc gracefully through meter showers and owls that bury into beds of daffodils. In this place worry is edged out by the fantastic and mystical snails trail neon candy canes through the scorched earth. The apocalyptic is supplanted by the surreal and the allegorical.
Anxiety followed me. The escapist reflects and distorts its shadow world, the real, a funhouse mirror that names the traumas as it blows past them, slyly referential. The work suggests that magic is possible; while anchoring itself in the grotesque, inedible foods, a conglomeration of garbage. A blissful, almost psychedelic, reverence for nature exists, but the fantasy’s origins leach through in the details and distortions. The animals are often translucent, reflective. Nature persists, proliferates, and transforms. Relentless flowers push up against the edges of paintings, attempting to smother and subsume, animals and people oblivious to any threat; the threat always present.
Not Mirrors, Portals
In past work I recreated place and infused it with memory; a snowy forest or vast horizon line overshadowed by environmental damage and marked by abstraction. After a tumultuous year, I find myself dreaming of the apocalyptic, four horsemen, frogs falling from the sky, the sea parting in triumphant arcs. In this work memory is permeated with nostalgia to the point of corruption. A landscape singed and burning, animals fleeing, soaring and independent, their entities barely tethered to the underlying structures. A rabbit crushes blistered tulips and flamingos erupt into rainbow-drenched lily pads. The sentiment overripe and romanticized, useless. Flowers grow into fur, fires emerge in snow, a grotesque glimpse into a world gone wrong grows into leaping, looming celebration
In this place, a longing for before still exists, addictive and powerful. Time slows to a halt. The moment before a house explodes frozen as a coyote bounds over a mirage, squirrels fall through the sky and ships collide, pandas forage for food in a landscape as red as a new planet, a herculean effort to survive no matter what it takes. Movement begins in and transcends the current chaos and devolution.
This other world not a mirror but a portal. Resilience evolved, mutated. Here, in this made up place, the most horrendous things are overcome. Grief is met with bejeweled stallions, beat up trucks tear through the sky into far off sunsets, and rams pound information back together, bit by bit, new, ancient, heroic. The unfathomable transforms into something reborn, something hopeful.
Curriculum Vitae
EDUCATION
2014 Master of Fine Arts, Painting, University of Arizona
2010 Bachelor of Fine Arts, Painting and Printmaking, University of Alaska, Fairbanks
2003 Bachelor of Arts, Environmental Studies, University of California, Santa Cruz
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2024 A Feast to Remember with new sculptures, Form and Concept, Santa Fe, NM
2024 New Paintings and Ceramics, Visions West Gallery, Bozeman, MT
2024 Okay With the Distortion, Ferrara Showman Gallery, New Orleans, LA
2023 A Feast to Remember, Alabama Contemporary, Mobile, AL
2023 Between Worlds, William Havu Gallery, Denver, CO
2022 Half-light, Galerie Bengelstrater, Dusseldorf, Germany
2022 New paintings and ceramics, Karlsruhe Art Fair, Galerie Bengelsträter, Karlsruhe, Germany
2021 Mirrors and Portals, Ferrara Showman Gallery, New Orleans, LA
2021 Needs More Wonder, Alabama Contemporary Art Museum, Mobile, AL
2020 Letting Go Of Utopia, Mesa Contemporary Arts Museum, Phoenix, AZ
2018 Our Shared Disaster, Ferrara Showman Gallery, New Orleans, LA
2018 Lone Star, True But Whatever, Rosefsky Gallery, Binghamton University, Binghamton, NY
2015 Nearly Somewhere, Process Museum, Tucson, AZ
2013 Selected Works, OLLI Public Space, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ
2013 Teleology / Echopraxia, Works on paper, Lionel Rombach Gallery,
2013 These Trace Remains, Porter Hall Gallery, Tucson, AZ
2010 Copulated Nightmares, Androgynous Daydreams, UAF Gallery, University of Alaska Fairbanks, Fairbanks, AK
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2024 Ceramics Now, Greenwich House Pottery, Jane Hartsook Gallery, New York, NY
2024 Two by one, Sam Takeuchi Gallery, Santa Fe, NM
2024 Counter Cowboy, Visions West, Denver, CO
2023 Paper Trails, Form and Concept and Zane Bennett Gallery, Santa Fe, NM
2023 Ryo Kato and Jenny Day, Galerie Bengelsträter, Karlsruhe, Germany
2023 Mountain Standard Time, Visions West, Bozeman, MT, Denver, CO
2023 Select Works, Galerie Bengelstrater, Dusseldorf, Germany
2023 Karlsruhe Art Fair, Galerie Bengelsträter, Karlsruhe, Germany
2023 Blick Nach Vorn, Galerie Bengelstrater, Iserlohn, Germany
2023 Arrivals, Form and Concept, Santa Fe, New Mexico
2022 Lush 2 , Contemporary Ceramics Exhibition, Lighthouse Arts Center, Tequesta, Florida
2022 Im Dialog, Jenny Day and Johanna Flammer, Galerie Bengelsträter, Curator Wilko Austermann , Düsseldorf, Germany
2022 Kohn Art Fair, Galerie Bengelstrater, Kohn, Germany
2022 Cakes, Bad Mother, Lemonade Stand, Fairbanks, Alaska
2022 Cakes, Bread Inc, Lemonade Stand, Fairbanks, Alaska
2022 Cakes, IGCA, Lemonade Stand, Anchorage, Alaska
2021 Jenny Day and Anna Lena Straube, Galerie Bengelsträter, Düsseldorf, Germany
2021 Frankfurt Art Fair, Galerie Bengelsträter, Frankfurt, Germany
2021 Confluence, DAY + WALDMAN, two person exhibition, Chung-Numont Gallery,
San Francisco, CA
2021 Flights of Fancy, Southwest Contemporary Magazine, Santa Fe, NM
2021 35 x 35 Project, Copelouzos Family Art Museum, Athens, Greece
2020 Inspiration in Isolation, Ferrara Showman Gallery, New Orleans, LA
2020 Rocky Mountain Biennial, Museum of Art Fort Collins, Fort Collins, CO
2020 Arte Laguna Final Exhibition, Venice Arsenale, Venice, Italy
2020 Jenny Day, Lui Ferreyra, Emmett Culgigan. Ryan Magyar, William Havu Gallery, Denver, CO
2019 CLIMATE, Michigan State University, Metrospace, East Lansing, MI
2019 Small Works Considered, Davis Dominguez Gallery, Tucson, AZ
2019 Take Nothing For Granted, Pima Community College, Tucson , AZ
2019 Take Nothing For Granted, Tucson International Airport, Tucson , AZ
2019 On Our Watch, Three-Person Exhibition, Davis Dominguez Gallery, Tucson, AZ
2019 Transiting 2, University of Arizona Joseph Gross Gallery, Tucson, AZ
2019 Arrowmont Instructor Exhibition, Arrowmont, TN
2019 Gallery Artist, Davis Dominguez Gallery, Tucson, AZ
2019 30 Collages, Gallery Artist, Ferrara Showman Gallery, New Orleans, LA
2018 Contemporary Forum Artist Award Exhibition, Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix, AZ
2018 Arte Laguna Final Exhibition, Venice Arsenale, Venice, Italy
2018 From Underfoot: Breaking Through Surface and Ground, Blue Star Contemporary,
San Antonio, TX
2018 Odyssey II, Torrance Art Museum, Torrance, California
2018 Art Auction, Crocker Museum. Sacramento, California
2018 Small Things Considered, Davis Dominguez Gallery, Tucson, Arizona
2017 21st No Dead Artists, Ferrara Showman Gallery, New Orleans, LA
2017 Contemporary Landscape, Marin MOCA, Marin, California
2017 2017 Exhibition, Galerie Protege, New York, New York
2017 Contemporary Landscapes, Czong Institute for Contemporary Art Museum, Seoul, South Korea
2017 Sense of Place, Elmhurst Museum, Elmhurst, IL
2017 32nd Tallahassee International, Florida State University Museum of Fine Art, Tallahassee, FL
2017 Manual Digital, Space 151, San Francisco, CA
2017 Flora and Fauna, Arc Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2017 Small Things Considered, Davis Dominguez Gallery, Tucson, AZ
2017 Opposing Futures, FAT Village Projects, Fort Lauderdale, FL
2017 New Transitions, Palm Beach Atlantic University, West Palm Beach, FL
2017 Faculty / Student Exhibition, Armory Art Center, West Palm Beach, FL
2016 20th No Dead Artists, Ferrara Showman Gallery, New Orleans, LA
2016 New and Now, Armory Art Center, West Palm Beach, FL
2016 11th National Exhibition, Axis Gallery, Sacramento, CA
2016 Art Of Our Century, Woodbury Art Museum, Utah Valley University, Orem, UT
2016 West, Coos Art Museum, Coos Bay, OR
2016 Small Things Considered, Davis Dominguez Gallery, Tucson, AZ
2015 The Land Mark Show, Center for Contemporary Arts, Santa Fe, NM
2015 Mark, Ground Floor Gallery, Nashville, TN
2015 Southwestern Invitational, Yuma Fine Arts Association, Yuma, AZ
2015 Small Things Considered, Davis Dominguez Gallery, Tucson, AZ
2015 Arizona Dreaming, Tang Gallery, Bisbee, AZ
2014 Master of Fine Arts Thesis Exhibition, University of Arizona Museum, Tucson, AZ
2014 Painting Now, Florence Quater Gallery, South West School of Visual Arts, Tucson, AZ
2014 Four to Watch, Davis Dominguez Gallery, Tucson, AZ
2014 Great Women Artists, Mayor’s Gallery, Tucson, AZ
2014 Small Things Considered, Davis Dominguez Gallery, Tucson, AZ
2014 Three-person Exhibition, Refractions: Interpretations of Space and Place, Tucson Pima Arts Council, Pioneer Building, Tucson, AZ
2014 Two-person Exhibition, Resonant Soils, Revisioned Structures, Drawing Studio, Tucson, AZ
2014 Diner d’arte Scottsdale, Bianca Lauren Gallery, Phoenix, AZ
2014 Arizona Higher Education Sustainability Art Show, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ
2014 Arizona Altered Postcard, Exploded View, Tucson, AZ
2014 Wet Paint MFA Biennial, Zhou B. Art Center, Chicago, IL
2013 Arizona Biennial, Tucson Museum of Art, Tucson, AZ
2013 New Art In Arizona, Arizona Artist Guild Exhibition 2013, Shemmer Museum, Phoenix, AZ
2013 Art On Tap, Displayed at Tucson Museum of Art, Tucson, AZ
2013 Perceptual Excavations, Tejas Gallery, Dayton, OH
2013 Among The Trees, Dendrochronology Department, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ
2012 Three-person Exhibition, The Sum Of The Sequence From Then Until Now Is Not Equal To Here Multiplied By There, Lionel Rombach Gallery, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ
2012 Artist By Night, Porter Hall Gallery, Tucson, AZ
2012 It’s All About The Buildings, Womankraft, Tucson, AZ
2011 First Year MFA Exhibition, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ
2011 Gender Blender: Identities in Flux, Student Union Gallery, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ
2009- Fall and Spring Juried Art Shows, UAF Gallery, University of Alaska Fairbanks,
Fairbanks, AK
2009 Women and Myth, Ciao Gallery, Wilson, WY
2008 Women in Alaska, Alaska House, Fairbanks, AK
2008 The Presidents Show, UAF Gallery, University of Alaska Fairbanks, Fairbanks, AK
2008 Gallery Artist, The Stash Gallery, Fairbanks, AK
2006 Parallel Lines, Bear Gallery, Fairbanks, AK
2007 Parallel Lines, Bear Gallery, Fairbanks, AK
2006-2022 UAF Sculpture Garden, Fairbanks, AK
