Janet Olney: Night and Day
July 28, 2021 – January 15, 2022
355 Pod Space Gallery
Janet Olney uses her abstract language of shape to reflect on the past year of pandemic life and our re-emergence. “Night and Day” translates the shifting perceptions from then to now and the individual experiences of quarantine into gesture and form. The installation reframes the familiar into a metaphorical world that circumvents language and unfolds as a new interpretation of everyday experience.
“My work surfaces the unseen through a sense of the familiar and observable – spatial relationships, the play of light, and the connection of gesture to form. Deciphering between reality and abstraction creates opportunities to entertain things beyond the realm of accepted knowledge.”
About the artist:
Janet Olney was born in Lowell, MA, and studied painting at the Maryland Institute of Art, where she received her BFA and MFA (Hoffberger School of Painting). She is the recipient of an MSAC Individual Artist Award in Painting, the Henry Walters Traveling Fellowship to study in Tokyo, Japan, and a Marcella Brenner Grant for Faculty Research.
Her recent projects include a permanent installation for the Facebook AIR program in Washington D.C. and solo exhibitions at the ICA, Baltimore, and the Lightwell Gallery, the University of Oklahoma in Norman, OK. Her current show, “And Other Dreams,” at Martha Spak Gallery in Washington DC, is up through August 29th. She lives and works in Baltimore, MD, and her studio practice focuses on paintings and mixed media installation.
Website: janetolney.com
IG: @janet.olney