Janet Reynolds
instagram.com/janetmreynoldsart
http://www.janetmreynolds.com/
Artist Bio:
Janet Reynolds is a visual artist/teacher and taught art to intermediate students in Texas for fifteen years. She is an adjunct professor at the University Of Houston, Clear Lake where she teaches book arts and drawing. She also teaches workshops at the Printing Museum in Houston. She is interested in architecture, nature and the environment and these are frequently subjects in her artist books and paintings.
Bloom
This book is creating using the Turkish map fold and the Hungarian Map fold combined. Plant cards are woven into the Turkish map fold. Images of flowers are painted and placed inside the Hungarian map fold. I chose the brown paper to represent the dirt and the green paper to represent the foliage of the flowers. The book is contained in a handmade box resembling a flower pot.
Threads
I am an advocate for recycling and repurposing in both my personal and professional life. As a teacher, I try to create lessons to for my art students that repurpose materials. In my personal art, I will repurpose materials in my books. I’m also a “collector”. I see value or potential in objects that someone might be discarding. This book is created from discarded embroidery color charts. The stark white cover contrasts with the color explosion happening inside. I gave the flags dimension by tying on strands of embroidery floss. I used what I had in my supplies to match the colors in the chart which is why some flags have several threads attached while others have none.
Flutter
This book is created using Hedi Kyle’s panorama structure. This structure seemed a natural choice to emphasize the butterflies. The pivoting feature of the individual panels remind me of the movement of their wings. Many of the images were referenced from photographs taken on a trip to Costa Rica. Visiting the La Paz Waterfall Gardens near Heredia, I experienced the butterflies in their natural habitat.
Cultural Tragedy
James Baldwin is quoted as saying, “Urban renewal means…Negro removal”. Freedman’s Town is in Houston’s Fourth Ward near downtown. This community on the National Register of Historic Places continues to be threatened by urban renewal. The shotgun houses which inspired this book have slowly disappeared to make room for new high-rise homes. The streets are made from bricks that were made and laid by freed slaves and their ancestors. In addition to the disappearing architecture, these historic bricks have been damaged during a construction project. These and other historic structures are being preyed upon by developers who want to bulldoze them to the ground. Is it too late to save this community so its historical culture is not forgotten?
