At the "Art" of the Matter
Meet the Four Ohio Women Artists who are Showing at The Contemporary Dayton This Month
Alison Jardine
Art found its way back to Alison Jardine despite the practical pull of society. As the daughter of a painter and sister of an art student, as a young adult she’d dabbled in art school herself but had found art-related jobs weren’t as plentiful by the time it was her turn. She opted to go the straight-and-narrow working for 10 years in her native Great Britain in the high-tech industry for Amazon since its startup.
However, upon moving to the United States 15 years ago, she was unable to get a work visa; so, she secured her stay by attending the University of North Texas in Dallas and eventually earning a Master of Fine Arts which led the University of Cincinnati, where she now teaches.
“It’s like mycelium—the roots of a mushroom—the artist community,” she lovingly joked.
Her mushroom reference isn’t out of nowhere. “My interest as an artist is very much about ecology and sustainability,” she said. The inspiration for her pieces in the “With Devotion” show at The Contemporary Dayton (The Co) was borne out of her experiences as a hiker.
“I began hiking as a way to understand where I’m living,” she said. On her hikes, she would often see stray trash, which inspired her to take tree trunks and soil from Cincinnati, where she now resides, and create sculptures of cast concrete mixed with disposable packaging on top of the trunks.
“Basically everything we buy comes in packaging that we’re supposed to throw away, but it just sits somewhere, like in the ocean. I started looking at these things and finding their interiors really interesting; so, I pulled the packaging into the concrete, and I’m left with extremely strange, interesting shapes that stack on top of each other.”
"My interest as an artist is very much about ecology and sustainability.”
Heather Jones
From making mud pies in the backyard as a child in Cincinnati to using textiles to create paintings in her current work, Heather Jones finds her love for making art in the medium she uses and the connection it has to makers.
Her work borrows techniques from quilt making, a tradition passed down through generations of women.
“I’m interested in how colors work and fabric’s connection to women’s work—the role of a mother, domestic issues, feminist approach—pushing the boundary between craft versus fine art. I was drawn to fabric because of its familiarity and qualities of saturated color and textural luminosity,” she said.
She, herself, found her way to the medium in her role as a mother.
“I switched to fabric when I had kids because it’s not messy,” she said. “I didn’t have to worry about my kids accidentally eating paint or having to wear special studio clothes. It allowed me to be creative when I only had short amounts of time.”
Using commercially available, woven, cotton fabric, such as quilts and home furnishings, she cuts up different fabrics, pieces them together, sews together the formation using a sewing machine, and stretches it over a wooden-frame canvas.
“I have an idea of what it’s going to look like ahead of time, but there’s always an element of chance when stretching it because seam lines shift and stretch, revealing their final placement only once the piece is finished.”
Jones’ work has been shown nation and worldwide, and her first book was published in 2015. She and her husband Jeff live on a small farm in Springboro, with their two children. Her work is now on display at the “With Devotion” show at The Co.
“I’m interested in how colors work and fabric’s connection to women’s work.”
Jenniffer Omaitz
Thanks to her high school French class, Jenniffer Omaitz found her calling as an artist at the age of 15. Her mother had always fostered creativity in her, but the synergy of her family encouraging her to take the French class’ trip to Paris and completing her first high school art classes opened her up to a new world.
“There’s something about going to a different place and being so shrouded by the history, and you realize for the first time, ‘I want to continue this; so, if being an artist or being in art classes is what got me here, then I want to keep doing that.’”
She went on to study painting at both the Cleveland Institute of Art and in the Master of Fine Arts program at Kent State University and begin a career as an abstract artist.
The pieces Omaitz is showing at The Co's “With Devotion” exhibition are made using acrylic with her own medium, such as gouache, mixed in for a more natural quality, and range from 12”x12” to 44”x48”. The work is very gestural, very designed, she said. It references architecture, different parts of 20th century graphic design. Some pieces reference medieval manuscripts. One piece, in particular, called Missing Marginalia, intentionally has some of the same colors you might see from a Renaissance or pre-Renaissance manuscript.
“It’s about painting: this process and activity that is making something of a mental landscape in a way. It’s exposing the process of putting paint on a surface, but that surface, of course, is the document of a moment in time—something that is ephemeral; so, it can be poetic, structural, lyrical.”
“It’s about painting: this process and activity that is making something of a mental landscape in a way.”
Paige Williams
Playing as a child under her father’s drafting table as he drew the perfect lines of an architect, Paige Williams first imagined what it would be like to be an artist. She followed that dream to Eastern Kentucky University to study art and then at the University of Cincinnati (UC) for a Master of Fine Arts in painting.
Her pieces selected for the “With Devotion” exhibition employ acrylic paint applied through paint markers on yupo, a bright white plastic paper. Perhaps drawing inspiration from her father, her work is based on the grid: vertical versus horizontal lines; however, hers is more of a subjective viewing experience.
“[I use] the grid because everyone understands the grid and its perfection; so, when I deviate from that, it’s obvious that I’ve intentionally deviated from it. Whereas, if you draw an arm really big, you don’t know if the person is bad at drawing or the person’s arms are really big.”
She continues, “I’m really interested in the awkward and the clumsy in response to the perfection of the grid. We’re always trying to be perfect and graceful, but it’s really those awkward, clumsy moments when we recognize our humanity. Like when you see someone trip over a crack in the sidewalk, and you instantly feel bad for them. As someone who strives for perfection, as most people kind of do, I constantly try to thwart that and accept imperfection.”
Williams has taught others the balance between the two in art at the Art Academy in Cincinnati, where she currently serves as Academic Dean.
“As someone who strives for perfection, as most people kind of do, I constantly try to thwart that and accept imperfection.”