Session 2: Soma and Jinx 

Maxine Henryson & Jane Swavely
Memory + Imagination

Monday, March 8, 2021, 8 am EST
Webinar Link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84592197420
Webinar ID: 845 9219 7420

There will be two lectures in session 2 with both artists presenting personal projects Maxine Henryson Soma ( Sanskrit for spiritual healing from nature)  and Jane Swavely Jinx (an unknowing collusion of ideas).

In this lecture, Maxine Henryson will discuss the process of creating luminous painterly photographs about place and the everyday. Exhibitions and artist books are spaces that offer an opportunity to sequence and edit disparate elements to construct an experience that challenges our perceptions of how we see the world and feminist photographic image-making is a strategy that can potentially transform the patriarchy to a feminist culture. The underlying theme is interconnectivity, interdependence and how we are all part of one entity.

Jane Swavely will discuss making luminous paintings, drawings, and books that turn out to have abstract yet seemingly universal themes be it landscape references or color and light.  Jinx, a slang term for the phenomenon of two things being said at the same time or as Swavely sees it, a zeitgeist in thinking and trends that can happen unknowingly or through our virtual interconnectivity.

Suggested Reading - Maxine Henryson:
Jordan G. Teicher, Museum of the Future: Portable and Personal https://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2017/05/22/museum-of-the-future-portable-and-personal/
Dayanita Singh Instagram account @dayanitasingh
Jhumpa Lahiri, “In Other Words”, The Metamorphosis, p 161-173https://static1.squarespace.com/static/574dd51d62cd942085f12091/t/5fc7d7b721434e2273492506/1606932414813/JUMPA+Lahiri.pdf
She Needed No Camera To Make the First Book of Photographs Nohttps://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/15/arts/design/she-needed-no-camera-to-make-the-first-book-of-photographs.html
Cy Twombly, “Cy Twombly Photographs: Lyrical Variations”, catalogue for an exhibition at the Kawamura Memorial DIC Museum of Art, essay by Kiyoko Maeda
Germano Celant, introduction to Luigi Ghirri’s 2008 Aperture monograph, Luigi Ghirri:It’s Beautiful Here, Isn’t It...,

Suggested Reading - Jane Swavely:
F, Jutta Koether, Nick Mauss(Translator), Michael Sanchez (Translator), F, Sternberg Press, 2014
Emily Hunt, Dark Green, The Song Cave, 2015.  Original,  p 10,  Symbols, p11,  Its Good to be in your Paintings, p35

Maxine Henryson is a photographer and bookmaker who lives and works in New York. Her photographic practice draws from traditions including painting, film, performance, installation and sculpture. She has a Master of Philosophy from the University of London, a Master of Arts in Teaching from the University of Chicago and a Master of Fine Arts in Photography from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Recent solo exhibitions include True Though Invented, A.I.R. Gallery, New York (2020), Contrapuntal, A.I.R. Gallery, New York (2017), Ujjayi’s Journey, A.I.R. Gallery, New York, Calculated Coincidence, Kleinschmidt Fine Photographs, Wiesbaden (2014). Selected group exhibitions include Women on the Line, Studio 44, Stockholm (2017), Cooperative Consciousness, A.I.R. artists at Kochi-Muziris Biennale, India (2016–17), The Body in Review, ARC Gallery, Chicago (2015), Unscharf. Nach Gerhard Richter, Hamburger Kunsthalle (2011), as well as Lives of the Hudson, Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery, Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, New York (2010), and Marvelous Reality/Lo Real Maravilloso, Gallery Espace, New Delhi (2009). Maxine Henryson has been a member of A.I.R. Gallery, New York since 2012. Her photography is the subject of three monographs: Ujjayi’s Journey (Kehrer, 2012), Red Leaves and Golden Curtains (Kehrer, 2007), and Presence (Artist Publications, 2003).

Jane Swavely’s work is in public and private collections including Chase  Manhattan Bank, and the Allentown Art Museum. Jane studied at Boston  University and the School of Visual Arts in New York. She was the recipient of a Ford Foundation Fellowship. Previously represented by CDS Gallery, she is currently a member of A.I.R. Gallery where her most recent solo show, Jinx,  took place in November 2018. 

Jane Swavely has exhibited her work in solo exhibitions at A.I.R. Gallery, Brooklyn,  NY, the New Arts Program, Kutztown, PA, Loyola College, Baltimore, MD,  and at CDS Gallery, New York, NY. Additionally, her work has been featured in numerous group exhibitions in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, St Louis,  San Francisco, Philadelphia, Nashville, and abroad. Swavely’s work has been featured in numerous contemporary art publications including a review of her latest solo exhibition by Sharon Butler in Two Coats of Paint, and feature interview by Anna Mikaela Ekstrand, Editor-in-Chief of Cultbytes. 

She lives and works in New York City and serves as president of the Board of  Directors at A.I.R., a historic non-profit artist-run exhibition space in New  York City that supports the open exchange of ideas and risk-taking by self-identified women artists, founded in 1972.