The World Inside a Grape: Pixerina Witcherina and the Art of Play

A Conversation About the Exhibition Pixerina Witcherina Magisterium

ARTIST TALK: Thursday, July 18, 2024  6:00 PM

Kleinert/James Center for the Arts · 36 Tinker St. Woodstock NY · 12498

The World Inside a Grape: Pixerina Witcherina and the Art of Play

Join us for a conversation about the exhibition “Pixerina Witcherina Magisterium” with curator/artist Julie Heffernan, writer Natania Rosenfeld and exhibition artists Joan Bankemper and Jenny Lynn McNutt at the Kleinert/James Center for the Arts on Thursday, July 18, 6pm. This event is free and open to the public.

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION PIXERINA WITCHERINA MAGISTERIUM

In the exhibition Pixerina Witcherina Magisterium, curator Julie Heffernan brings together the works of Joan Bankemper, Ruth Marten and Jenny Lynn McNutt in an abundant display of “too muchness.”  Based on Virginia Woolf’s term for her secret language of play, Pixerina Witcherina captures a whirlwind of weird sculptural forms, heady designs and humorous portraits in a powerful exploration of these artists’ rich interior worlds. 

ABOUT THE PARTICIPANTS:

Joan Bankemper: Joan Bankemper received her BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute and  MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art. Upon moving to NYC she radically challenged her academic training to site specific installations using vegetation and the community as her primary medium; her ‘social practice’ was fully incorporated in her art making. Bankemper has shown with Creative Time, Inc., NY; The New Museum, NY; Artpace, San Antonio, TX; The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, MA; and Wave Hill, Riverdale, NY. Bankemper received grants from The George Sugarman Foundation and the NEA. The McColl Center of Visual Arts awarded her the Gabi Award. Bankemper’s videos and videograms have been exhibited at Leo Castelli Gallery NY; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; The Detroit Institute of the Arts; The Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea, Milan; Marianne Boesky Gallery, NY and the Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, DC.

Jenny Lynn McNutt – Jenny Lynn McNutt is a visual artist whose practice encompasses painting, drawing and ceramic sculpture. Originally from Tennessee, McNutt has spent the past 30 years living and working in Brooklyn, NY, and recently set up a studio in an old church in upstate NY as well.  McNutt earned an MFA from Yale School of Art and was a Fulbright fellow to West and Central Africa. For her documentary work in West Africa she received an Eastman Foundation grant. Jenny Lynn McNutt has shown her work both nationally and internationally, including North Africa and China. In 2019 her ceramic sculptures were included in the American Academy of Arts & Letters Invitational Exhibition of Visual Arts. Other recent exhibitions in NYC include: Ceramics + Drawing into Sculpture, Anthro-Shift, and Cosmophilia. Her work will be featured in an upcoming group show entitled Biophilia at Pamela Salisbury in Hudson, NY, and in 2025, a solo exhibition of her work will be presented at the New York Studio School, where she currently teaches. 

Julie Heffernan – Julie Heffernan is an American artist whose paintings reflect on environmental, (art) historical, feminist, literary, social, and political subjects. Heffernan was raised in Northern California, received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in printmaking and painting from University of California at Santa Cruz, and earned her MFA at Yale School of Art. She is a Professor of Fine Arts at Montclair State University and Co-founder of the journal Painters on Paintings. Heffernan will be having a solo exhibition in November at Catharine Clark Gallery in San Francisco and her graphic novel Babe in the Woods, or the Art of Getting Lost (Algonquin) will be coming out in September.

Natania Rosenfeld – Natania Rosenfeld is a writer, independent scholar and Professor Emerita of English (Knox College). She has recently published her second poetry collection: The Blue Bed (Spuyten Duyvil, 2021) and her first book of poetry, Wild Domestic was published in 2015 (Sheep Meadow Press). Natania Rosenfeld has also published a critical book, Outsiders Together: Virginia and Leonard Woolf (Princeton, 2000), and a chapbook of essays, She and I (Essay Press, May 2018). Her essays, poems and fiction are forthcoming or have appeared in journals including AGNI, Yale Review, APR, Raritan, Gettysburg Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Prairie Schooner and Southwest Review, and four essays have been listed as “Notable” in Best American Essays collections. In 2018, Rosenfeld was named one of 30 “Writers to Watch” by the Guild Literary Complex in Chicago. Natania Rosenfeld continues to teach literature courses for adults through the Newberry Library and the Graham School at the University of Chicago.

About the Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild:

The Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild is a regional center for the arts located in Woodstock, New York. From its 250-acre mountainside campus and its arts and performance center in the village of Woodstock, Byrdcliffe offers an integrated program of exhibitions, performances, classes, workshops, symposia, and artists’ residencies. Byrdcliffe embraces all disciplines of artistic endeavor in a collaborative spirit, and seeks creative partnership with other not-for-profit and educational entities in order to leverage its unique resources for the benefit of the cultural life of the Hudson Valley region. Byrdcliffe was founded in 1902 and has operated as a nonprofit organization since 1938.  Learn more about the history of Byrdcliffe. 

TO VIEW THE EXHIBITION CATALOGUE ONLINE, CLICK HERE