Jenny Lynn McNutt in "A Menagerie of Metaphors"
Jenny Lynn McNutt’s work will be
featured in A Menagerie of Metaphors along with such art
luminaries at Louise Bourgeois, Walton Ford and Kiki Smith. The show, the 103rd
Annual Exhibition at Randolph College’s Maier Museum, will be on view September
12-December 14. Jenny Lynn will be the featured visual artist in the 23rd
Annual Helen Clark Berlind Symposium (October 3-4) at the museum.
As the title of the show suggests,
the work on view goes beyond illustration into the realm of allegory and Jenny
Lynn’s rabbits fit right in. With their exaggerated haunches and ears, they
evoke the quintessential idea of a rabbit or lanky hare, but their soulful,
threatening, or rapturous attitudes add an anthropomorphic touch that
underscores the “elastic continuum of creatures.” This theme, central to Jenny Lynn’s
work, also figures in Precise Breathing,
a project she developed about the honeybee between 2001 and 2010 beginning with
a solo performance and culminating with a diverse installation of sculpture and
works on paper.
Using dynamic lines and veils of scumbled color that range
from soft to bold, Jenny Lynn renders her leporids
with an exuberance and potency that seems to perfectly match
their animus. Dancing, floating or upside down, they seem to inhabit a
dreamscape. Indeed, it was a transformative dream where a ten-foot hare
appeared and waltzed Jenny Lynn away that provided the inspiration for this
body of work entitled Zoopsia (hallucination of animals),
first begun in 2010 at VCCA. http://www.jennylynnmcnutt.com/
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