Jenny Schmid | Wildness Lost

This newest body of work, Wildness Lost, takes a new turn to connect with environmental themes through the use of mythical figures.  These figures confront the realities of encroaching technology and diminishing wilderness while continuing the search for utopian ideals and indulging in desire as a form of resistance.  This group of etchings is inspired by the history of fantastical beasts in printed imagery from the 1500s and 1600s.  These creatures were invented out of a need to simultaneously propagate an ideal and escape from confining social expectations.  For example, The Wild People are mythical human-beast hybrids who were free of societal constraints and morality.  They were a precursor to the myth of the contemporary Yeti, who is normally depicted as a solitary figure (but falls in love with a human girl in a clear-cut forest in my recent piece The Wildness).

In Social Media Siren a mermaid employs social media to lure men to the rocks, this time depicted as a pile of discarded electronic waste. These allegorical figures are forced to deal with the reality of contemporary problems, drawing poetic attention to current contradictory desires of idealism and materialism.

*Jenny Schmid will give an artist talk on Friday 10-5 at 6:30 at Pratt in the Yellow building

**Jenny will also be conducting a walk through of her work during the First Thursday, Art Walk starting at 7:00pm.

View Jenny's BIO and more of her work HERE.