Brenda Jones at Rosewood

Thanks to Ms. Cartophiliac for dragging me out to the Rosewood Gallery in Kettering, Ohio, near Dayton. The current exhibit includes the fiber art work of Brenda Jones... with maps! Hurry if you want to see. It is only here until April 25.

From the Kettering-Oakwood Times:

Brenda Jones, of Cheney, KS, received her MA in painting and photography from the Wichita State University in Wichita, KS. She is currently teaching art at Wichita East High School and at Friends University in Wichita. Jones has received the Fullbright Award to teach and study in Argentina and the Japan Fullbright Memorial Fund to study the role of the kimono in Japan. The clothing articles are primarily aprons and jackets, which are reminiscent of women, remembered, imagined and known.

With each hand-sewn piece, she addresses women’s issues and feels more connected to her grandmother, who was an alterations lady for a major department store. The works are bigger than life sized and created mainly from paper, but include more unique materials such as tea bags, chopsticks, wax, seaweed, used coffee filters and used drier sheets.

... and maps!

I wrote to Brenda for more information, and she sent a photo of this piece, Willa's Milky Way, "Which is made almost entirely of maps... Nebraska/Colorado. It's really about Willa Cather (one of my favorite authors) and the traditional quilt block pattern "Milky Way"."



"Actually, I use maps in the work often to signify a geographic place where I was when those thoughts were going through my head. Also, I sometimes use them because they really give a place to the person I was thinking of. Or, sometimes it is simply because they symbolize some time of journey to me and most of the works do have something to do with a journey of some sort or another...whether it is mental or geographic."



Some samples of her work can be seen here on the Rosewood site, and additional work can be seen at her online gallery at ArtCloud.com.

Thank you, Brenda. Your work is a treat!