Oil, charcoal and graphite on plasma cut steel, set of 4, 62″x8″x8″ each

On the KLRU Video about Generous Art, you can watch me work on these pieces.

Calligraphy Two, oil and charcoal on plasma cut steel, 59″ x 19″ x 2″

Paired with Calligraphy One:

Calligraphy One, oil and charcoal on plasma cut steel, 56″ x 17″ x 2″

Paired with Calligraphy Two:

Historically, painting told the stories of a culture on the surfaces of sacred spaces such as caves and temples. Today, visual storytelling has mainly moved to photography and film, and imagination and ideas are expressed in all creative mediums. What remains unique to visual art is the hand of the artist and the visceral relationship of the art object to both the maker and viewer of the art.

Art-making is my primary spiritual action. Creating art allows me to express my unique manifestation as a body and as a conscious being.

“Sacred Space” explores the space of the human body through architectural sculpture and gestural mark-making. I create forms that unify these ideas, such as a dome that is the diameter of my reach. Using the indexical movement of my arm, I draw and paint on the surface.  The finished artworks are both sculpture and painting.

So I may better understand how sacred space is created through geometry and form, I have studied the evolution of historical sacred architecture from Etruscan to Greek to Roman to Christian. Early temples used domes to represent the feminine. For example, the dome relates to the mother figure.  Catholic cruciform shapes represent the masculine, with vertical space representing the trinity.

Before construction, I create drawings and scale models to help me consider the sizes and proportions of the artworks as well as how to place the artwork in relationship to viewers. Some artworks explore the personal space of one body, while others describe the spatial relationship between several bodies at once. Family relationships and the dynamics of people in groups are important themes of my work, but some artworks are simply the practice of making marks in space with my unique hand in a variety of materials.

–KLRU’s Arts in Context– explores the making of Generous Art, an online gallery dedicated to raising money for nonprofits and artists, while going behind-the-scenes with the group’s founder and some of the showcased artists. Founded in 2011, Generous Art envisions art purchases as community-oriented transactions — rejecting the idea that art collection is a selfish endeavor or an isolated event. Generous Art replaces time consuming auction fundraisers with a purchase process that simultaneously funds the artist, a nonprofit and the mission of Generous Art. –www.generousart.org–

–SEE FULL Arts in Context EPISODE–

–Video of Jennifer Chenoweth during the EAST tour 2011–

by Jackie Stone

Some art is all about reproducing life or creating a statement. Some art is all about movement, feel and pure artistic practice.

The work by Austin’s Jennifer Chenoweth could be said to fall mostly into the latter category. She creates both paintings and sculpture, both of which can start either from a concrete concept or from the practice of gestural drawing and calligraphy. --READ FULL ARTICLE–

The People’s Gallery at Austin City Hall selected Heaven and Hell to hang in the atrium for 2012. Come see it at the show opening Friday February 24 from 6-9pm. Free and open to the public.