Jane Woolverton

Why do I spend time looking at art?

In the hope that I'll see something I haven't seen before and be transformed so that I'll see what I see differently from then on.

The artist and the art the artist makes doesn't promise I'll feel better about myself after I see it. And I don't feel better, I feel the same but with the difference that I've seen something I hadn't seen before and therefore could aim my life toward something I hadn't seen.

The artist makes something beautiful out of what's already been made.

There are more artists in the world than ever before but many, many fewer, just as there are many more people in the world than ever before, but many fewer people also.

Jane Woolverton makes art from plastic six-pack holders, acrylic paint, and nylon thread. Her art is sculptural like Eva Hesse's art is sculptural or like Lynda Benglis's art is sculptural, and is also to painting what Hesse and Benglis are to painting. That is, the art she makes can be hung on the wall or the ceiling or left to crawl across the floor and in each situation is still very much art.

Looking from a distance at Jane Woolverton's art, you're not sure what you're seeing, you're only sure that it's art, that the thing is changing as you look at it and as you look at it it's changing you.

Jane Woolverton's art hangs on the wall like three magic carpets, one for your eye, one for your brain, one for your heart.

When you walk up to the side of it and look at it sideways, you see how she's stitched the six-pack tops and how she's painted the plastic and how the three layers of them make the art that's a piece of sculpture.

Then when you come up really close and put your eyeball on a detail, you see she's made a most amazing painting.

[Thanks to sculpturesite, a new leaf gallery, in Sonoma, CA. www.sculpturesite.com]