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Jane Maxwell's solo exhibition will feature new work.
Gallery artist Jane Maxwell's billboard-like mixed media paintings and sculptures explore femininity and strength. Pop like imagery is combined with a variety of matrerials that render Maxwell's work modern while maintaining a vontage feeling. The deconstructed body is key to Maxwell's work, and is expressed through her use of powerfully stanced silhouettes. There is a sense of reflection in the repetitive bodies that allows the viewer to look beyond the feminine shape.
Artist:
Jane Maxwell is a mixed media collage artist exploring America's cultural preoccupation with beauty and body image. Trim, fashion-forward silhouettes serve as central protagonists in work that both illuminates and deconstructs the feminine ideal. Maxwell's collages, which include ink, paint, pencil and charcoal, are built up with detailed layers of vintage and found papers that are glued and nailed to wood panels which she then sands, scrapes, peels and cuts to create unique surfaces. She then completes each panel with a resin finish giving it the feel of a glossy magazine cover. Maxwell’s artistic voice grew out of a passion for vintage materials, modern fashion and design, mingled with a deep fascination for pop culture and the female icon. Recognized for her creative commentary on our modern obsession with beauty, Jane’s work has been featured in magazine articles, books and lectures on the topics of mixed media and collage as well as body image and art.
Statement by Jane Maxwell
I have loved fashion since I was a little girl. Some of my earliest memories are of visiting my grandfather’s garment factory in South Boston. He manufactured women’s clothing and I marveled at the huge bolts of fabric, the meticulous pattern makers and industrial stitching machines. His designer was a woman in her 20’s whom I simply worshipped. My grandfather would have his team create miniature versions of their designs for my sister and me, until we were old enough to go ‘shopping’ right off the endless racks in his facility.
Into my adulthood, my love for fashion only grew, but I went through a period of deeply resenting the fashion industry for teasing me with clothes that I could neither fit into nor afford. In fact, much of my art over the past 20 years has commented on my complicated relationship with fashion and its direct influence on the cultural epidemic of negative body image. As I’ve aged, I still can’t fit into most of the fashion I revere and I am still overwhelmed by the price tags, but something has shifted in me.
I have put aside my resentment and have come to terms with the fact that I am deeply and unapologetically moved by fashion. I find it to be creative and innovative. I love the power, confidence and individuality it offers women. I am enamored with the color, shape, texture, fluidity and form of fashion. And, I am happy that the fashion world has begun to embrace women of different shapes and sizes (There is still a very long way to go, but this fashion season, I have seen more curvy women and racial diversity than ever).
This new series celebrates fashion and power. The women on my canvas are striding with confidence, style and strength. They are influenced by the fashion seen on the pages of magazines, on the red carpet and in fashion shows, but have made it uniquely their own. I am asserting authority, individuality and fearlessness. On these canvas’ I am putting into play my own fantasy of becoming a fashion designer by dressing these women in found papers with distinct pattern, texture and print. Dresses are built from torn billboard papers that I’ve ripped down and re-purposed as fashion.
661 Sun Valley Road
Ketchum, Idaho
83340
