Today we’d like to introduce you to Jane Goldman.
Jane, please kick things off for us by telling us about yourself and your journey so far.
I grew up in Dallas, a city on a prairie as flat as a pancake, where the sky dominates the landscape. My response to the visual world was formed growing up in this place of light, flatness, and air. In her diary my mother wrote, when I was three, “Jane sings happily to herself while drawing.” Children sing and draw; I simply never left off these activities. Except for a two-year break in high school while I wrestled with the overwhelming implications of puberty, this is what I’ve always done. Making art grounds me.
My family of origin was oriented towards the business world. Aside from a great-great aunt who painted pastorals and a portrait, very grand, of Mary, Queen of Scots, and died young, no one knows of any visual artists in the family. It was a good deal. The field was clear.
After earning a B.A. in studio art at Smith College, I supported myself by singing in a band, the first of several over the next three decades. I moved to Boston after earning an MFA from the University of Wisconsin. I had a fierce desire: to be self-supporting through my art. I didn’t want an “outside” job, I didn’t want to teach full-time. I lived in a group house, co-founded-managed Artist’s Proof, a cooperative printmaking workshop in Cambridge, which subsidized my studio rent. I made large print editions on commission, and sang in Body and Soul, a local R&B/blues band.
Since 1987, I’ve been a partner in Mixit Print Studios, housed in Mixit Studios, a cooperative artist’s studio building in a converted soap factory where I live. This milieu serves as both a extended family community, and a locus of safety and sanity, a solution to solitude in these mad impersonal cities we inhabit.
A splendid aspect of my life in the creative arts has been traveling, to teach, make art in residency programs, and exhibit my work. I’ve been many times to the Ballinglen Arts Foundation in County Mayo, Ireland, since the early 1990’s, I’ve also had meaningful work experiences in Costa Rica, Cuba, Germany, and France, where I lived for two years.
I’m married to painter-musician-therapist Chris Gill, and together we go through a lot of paint. My 22-year old daughter Laura is also an integral part of my story. The apple fell far from the tree and bounced a few times, as she intends to be a police officer.
Can you give our readers some background on your art?
I make art to wake up, to dream, to understand, to speak to my colleagues, the world. My subjects are light and a big swath of the natural world: flora, fauna, landscapes, galaxies. I work from a combination of free association and direct observation, compelled by the interplay of light and shadow that creates spatial and psychological meaning. I find that close observation puts me in a contemplative zone; interpreting the visual world makes philosophers of artists.
My forty years of work in printmaking ranges from one-pass watercolor monotypes to elaborate multi-plate color etchings, and twenty-six-layer screen prints, (the action/reaction in creating this work is akin to playing chess).
Generally, I work in series. Of note are:
Still Lives of plants indigenous to New England.
Tidal Pools. Since 1993 I have been painting watercolors of Atlantic Ocean tidal pools in New England and Ireland. Tidal pools are metaphorically a microcosm of the primordial soup of the origins of life; they also bring to mind the rhythms of the macrocosm, changing according to the ebb and flow of the tides, mirroring the movement of the moon and its effect on earthly things. Watercolor, not typically used for large scale work, is my medium of choice for its unparalleled ability to depict the nebulous, the slippery, and the implied.
My 14-print Audubon suite, which displays my abiding interest in the world of arranged objects bathed in light, inviting meditation on their metaphysical properties. This body of work pays homage to the work of John James Audubon, and to my love of books.
Parsing the Universe. I am fascinated by technologies that extend human vision. Through microscopes we marvel at seeing the foundations of life, magnified to the cellular, molecular, and atomic levels; and at the beauty and symmetry of the zigzag, ribbon, and star shapes of diatoms.
Through the Hubble telescope we even transcend time and space, viewing images of the early universe. Microscopes and telescopes also show that things infinitesimal and huge in scale share shapes: the golden spiral manifest in rivers seen from space and the structure of the human lung; the birth and death of stars and the Higgs-Boson particle.
These technologies allow the human eye to see the previously unseen. Here, seeing is believing. Paradoxically, while we base what we know on what we see, what we see and hence what we know, continually changes as our knowledge increases through new technology.
Watercolor monotype most successfully expresses my aim to depict aspects of the universe revealed through Hubble telescope images. The interactions of water, color, and gravity painted on nonporous Plexiglas, combined with multiple layering options of printmaking, result in an alchemy possible only through this medium.
Do you think conditions are generally improving for artists? What more can cities and communities do to improve conditions for artists?
These are difficult times for artists. Perhaps it is the Trump era? Sales have been down for most artists I know in the last two years. Taking on debt is a sobering prospect. The arts are not particularly valued in our country.
However, a young friend just graduated with an MFA from the the Art Institute of Chicago and is rocking it with future exhibitions and sales lined up. I have no doubt she will do well.
If you have the fire in your belly, do it.
What’s the best way for someone to check out your work and provide support?
The easiest way to see my work is to visit my website janegoldmanart.com, where you will find listed future exhibitions, works for sale, and upcoming workshops.
Interested folks can email me at janeegoldman@comcast.net, to make an appointment for a visit to my studio in Somerville near Davis Square.
You can also walk on my artwork at Logan Airport! My terrazzo floor installations are located on the pedestrian walkways, linking Terminals A, B, C, and E to the parking garages at level 4.
“Atlantic Journey” is an aquatic walk from shore to deep ocean, with sea creatures indigenous to the New England region depicted in their proper zone of depth (habitat) along the way. Zone of depth is indicated by eight field colors transitioning from light to dark. The walkways are @2000’ in length (about seven football fields long.)
A second commission, “the Abyss”, continues the aquatic theme with deep sea creatures in the Terminal B walkways and ocean bottom creatures depicted on the Terminal C walkways. Together these installations include 90 species of marine animals.
Contact Info:
- Website: janegoldmanart.com
- Email: janeegoldman@comcast.net
Image Credit:
Susan Byrne
Getting in touch: BostonVoyager is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.
