Jenny Day (b.1981) is a painter and sculptor who lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She earned an MFA in Painting 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 Arte Laguna in Venice, Italy, Czong Institute for Contemporary Art in Korea, Museum of Art Fort Collins, Mesa Arts Museum, Phoenix Art Museum, Blue Star Contemporary Museum in San Antonio, TX, Alabama Contemporary in Mobile, AL, and Elmhurst Museum in Chicago, IL. Day's work has been supported by an Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant, a Puffin Foundation Grant, a Contemporary Forum Artist Grant from the Phoenix Art Museum, a Barron Purchase Award and on going support from The Process Museum. Day has participated at Greenwich House Pottery, the Ucross Foundation, the Jentel Foundation, and the Playa Foundation For The Arts, and many other artist residencies. Jenny Day is represented by Jonathan Ferrara Gallery in New Orleans, Louisiana, William Havu Gallery in Denver, Colorado, and Galerie Bengelstrater in Dusseldorf, Germany.
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.
