Exhibition Corodinator's note: Our thanks go to Ray Hardin, a University of Nevada Reno graduate student, for contibuting this essay to the Awards Exhibition project.

The Capital City Arts Initiative's UNR BFA Awards Exhibition displays the work of Jeanne Jo and Diana Snyder, two young artists just beginning to tap the exciting potential within the many layers of their artistic identities. This exhibit at the Carson City Courthouse shows that both Snyder and Jo continue to evolve new strategies-through media and methods as diverse as crochet and candy coated silk flowers-to explore the many possibilities present in their individual artistic visions.

Jeanne Jo's work engages, at every turn, both the limitations of artistic media and the cultural buttresses that act as barriers to freer forms of artistic expression. Jo devotes herself, as she puts it, to "addressing issues of beauty, pain, and obsession as they relate to my personal identity." Her background plays into her cultural and artistic explorations. As the child of a Korean immigrant and an American, Jo "grew up the child of two cultures." This has given her "a valuable view on identity," she explains. "My work often deals with feeling cut down the middle, feeling the duality of emotions that exist at any given time."

After early work in photography, digital media, painting and sculpture, Jo began the artistic explorations into crocheting, "already a big part of my life," resulting in her work for this exhibit, appropriately titled, "Leashes (variation)." [1] Jo employs simple materials-black yarn and thread-crocheted into ten rows of eighty small cats, each approximately two inches tall and spaced separately along the wall. Jo also uses the wall's recess to create a three-dimensional, low-relief effect for the piece.

The material and the process one might still associate with "women's work." And the repetition in such work-the same hand motions performed continuously, "tiny actions to make bigger things," elaborates Jo-is the key to understanding the piece. Taking repetition to this next level, to "emote both the power and the futility of repetition," as Jo puts it, allows her work to transcend the medium's limitations.

Repetition, in this sense, becomes what postmodern artist Janine Antoni characterized as thinking about art making as a form of prayer, making the process of creation as important as the art being created. Jo elaborated on her fascination with this type of expression in an interview for "Tell," a show she recently co-curated at the Chapterhouse Gallery. Based on communities of women such as knitting circles, and the linguistic and technological expansions evolving from them, Jo explained, "When these women would get together, they would tell stories. We thought that all these forms of communication were tied together-the language, the spinning of the yarns, and it all tied back to textiles and, basically, women."[2]

...

Diana Snyder
"Untitled" [installation view detail]
mixed media with melted hard candy
2004

Diana Snyder addresses similar concerns in her work, with an added sense of impermanence underscoring the immediacy of the experience. In the two works exhibited here, Snyder continues her explorations with candy and candy-coated flowers. "Monastery Gardens" displays strands of translucent, soft ivory and pale yellow candy flowers, with small red centers. The flowers hug the wall, strung along a white silk cord reaching as high as 20 ft. from the floor. "Honeysuckle" consists of eighteen fragranced silk flowers, soft pink and hot pink accents with green leaves. The flowers tilt elegantly from the bare white wall, their candy-coated essence trickling random, solid drops from each delicate petal.

Snyder's work combines repetition with the natural impermanence of her candy medium, offering viewers a different mode of understanding-one not easily grasped by those of us used to thinking of art as something meant to be both tangible and permanent. Again, the process proves essential for Snyder. Repetition to the point of compulsion leads to her to a "meditative" state, satisfying her own artistic impulse, and making up for, even explaining, the transience of the work itself.

Snyder's influences include Eva Hesse, a 1950s and 60s pioneer in creating minimalist art with latex and fiberglass, much of it disintegrating over time-emphasizing the "now" of the experience. Snyder's childhood provides the emotional substance for her work. Her mother's religious seriousness and her own compulsory attendance at private church schools suggest a sheltered early existence that now moves with ethereal, powerful force throughout her work. Each piece, says Snyder, springs directly out of "experiences from childhood. Often dumb, corny experiences," she admits, but emitting meaningful overtones for her artistic expression. Snyder relates the story of a single silk flower, a lavender lily taken from an old arrangement and given to her when she was four or five years old. One day her flower was missing, and she soon found that her sisters had marinated it in vinegar. "The tragedy of the experience" (mock melodrama entering her voice on the word tragedy) stuck with her, as did the pungent aroma of the lavender and vinegar mixture.

So, Snyder explores familiar issues from her self-described "candy-coated" early life in her candy-coated art. Other childhood memories illustrate the point-she evokes images of painting church windows with candy paint, and a gingerbread cathedral the children were allowed to tear down and eat. Her means of creation (Snyder often manipulates the candy coating with her lips and tongue to attain what she wants artistically) feeds her self-described obsession with oral fixation and "the overwhelming greed of consumption."

. . .

Ms. Snyder and Ms. Jo have known each other since they first entered the Bachelor of Fine Arts program at the University of Nevada, Reno. This exhibition thus represents their first professional work as artists. Despite the contrast, their work fits well together. Both artists rely on mundane, everyday materials, while stressing the importance of repetition. And both are quick to point out how their chosen materials and processes underscore deeply felt familial, communal, and feminist issues. Jo's work is more spatially ordered, the result of the deliberate act of repeating actions to fill a chosen space. Snyder employs a more fluid approach, one that often focuses attention on the space not being filled, and highlighting the bright colors for which she retains undying fondness. Both Jo and Snyder resist easy classification, but each artist holds a vision of her work as a meditative, behind-the-scenes process allowing them to produce work of emotionally charged immediacy. Best of all, each artist retains a vision that they continue to refine and explore.

Ray Hardin
Reno Nevada
October 2004

Footnotes:
1. A version of this exhibit was first shown in 2003 at UNR's McNamara Gallery.
2. David Torch, "Surveying Women," Reno News & Review, July 1, 2004.

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