Jane Pettit
Insight
100-year-old recycled church roof slates & Italian smalti over fiberglass, concrete & polystyr
6’7″ x 30″ x 16″
2020
$4,600
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Artist Statement
Life has been expressing myself through art, inspired by people and nature. After running a business for 20 years, I celebrate my life as an artist every day. My art reflects my love of intense color, bold texture and ordered chaos. An inclination to celebrate what’s right in the world often adds a sense of humor and whimsy to my work.
To achieve the bold statements I’m after, I use a combination of mosaic, three-dimensional collage and recycled assemblage. Insatiable curiosity and continual experimentation with form as well as materials means there’s always something new in the studio and the art can take on a life of it’s own. Faces and personality find their way into much of my 2D art. Fish and fowl alike show attitude when they emerge from the workbench! Making my own sculptural substrates usually involves carving polystyrene and covering it with fiberglass and concrete to make an outdoor form that will stand up to the Vermont winters I loved as a child. As if that wasn’t labor-intensive enough, I then mosaic the exterior with thousands of mosaic tesserae of glass, stone, metal, shell and ceramic. Some is 24K gold Italian glass, some is from the Catoctin Creek on the farm and some is donated when a friend’s beloved platter falls off the shelf.
