Investigations In Art: Alex Cohen
Essay # 24
“Epic Childhood”
Photo: “New Best Friend” By Jenny Kanzler
5/9/11

            This will be the third year that I am participating in the Elephant’s Eye Bucks County Studio Tour and pleased to be joined by Jenny Kanzler as the visiting artist in my studio.  Jenny was in the graduate program at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts when I was studying there and I fell under the spell of her imaginative paintings.  In advance of the tour I wanted to discuss some aspects of her artwork.  This is an excerpt from our conversation—the entire interview can be read on my website, www.themagpie.org

Alex:  Do you feel like the place that you are painting from is a harkening back to your childhood or are those elements of a childhood narrative a jumping off point to another place entirely?

Jenny:  The latter.  It’s a way of quickly getting to the heart of emotional experience because that’s the point when I learned everything… well I’m still learning. 

A:  It’s when your paradigms are formed.

J:   Like the first time you learn what a cavity is—you come to take for granted what a cavity is later in life, but the first time you learn about it it’s kind of horrifying.  When I think back about my childhood there’s this blending between what happened, what I imagined happened based on stories people told me, and what is the equivalent of a memory that is the memory of a dream.  It’s all intertwined.

A:  Do you find that painting preserves the memory for you?

J: I don’t think it helps preserve the memory, but it helps preserve the feeling associated with the memory.  Starting with something concrete like that you can communicate the anxiety or whatever is contained in the center of that memory that makes it so palpable. 

A:  Do you find your stories thread together in any larger narrative?

J:  Yes, they do.  Its not so much about telling what happened as it is about gathering a personal mythology.  I like how in a family you have these stories that everyone tells and over the years you don’t even have to tell the whole story, you just refer to them and everyone knows what you’re talking about.

A:  You do have such an affection for the foibles of childhood and the dicey experiences—are those the socially awkward experiences you are looking at?

J:  I was either always the underdog or was in a situation where I had a lot of empathy for the underdog.  So there were a lot of experiences.  I mean it was epic, childhood was epic which is why it felt like it needed a mythology.

A:  I’m curious about what aspects of childhood are poised for painting?

J:  Operating as an emotional being that hasn’t been fully socialized, everything has emotional content and the uncanny is all around you.  You know you have a home but there are so many unfamiliar things in the home.  Like you are in the bathroom and the shower curtain has butterflies that you look at one day and see as old men’s faces and suddenly it doesn’t feel like home anymore Something has changed and it’s frightening.

A:  That’s right, there is this immediate nostalgia for your environment when you are little and you are fascinated with what feels familiar, yet you know so little about it, so it has that capacity to become alienating.

J:  There’s so much potential to be frightened.  We had a red carpet in our bedroom.  When I was a kid I learned that red was associated with fire and hell so I thought this carpet was the portal to hell and I was terrified.  Adults don’t really worry about that because they understand it’s just a carpet.

A:  Do you want to say a little more about the comedic aspect in your work?
 
J: I guess I’m disturbed by the way that there is something funny in tragedy, that there is something pathetic about the human condition.  I don’t want to see it that way but it’s hard not to when you step back and you are surprised that there is humor in it.  So it’s about probing.  But the comedy is also relief. 

A:  It reconciles absurdity. I’m curious to hear how you’d describe the comedic element in your New Best Friend painting?

J:  I think I was kind of making fun of myself in that painting.  I was thinking about the friend triangle.  There was this sought after friend and I was battling with this other friend for her approval.  I was caught up in that trial.  Every morning one summer that friend would come in and say, “you’re my best friend,” and the next day Janet was her best friend.  And she used to bring sweet-tarts, the ones that come in a package of three.  Two were always for her, but whoever was that friend for the day would get that third sweet-tart.  And we put up with it and I was devastated when it wasn’t my day.  It was awful.  But when it was my day I was very proud of myself.  That image is of when it was my day, and I have my dodge ball because I feel very powerful. 

More of Jenny Kanzler's work can be seen at www.jennykanzler.com

Alex Cohen is a Bucks County painter.  He exhibits at Riverbank Arts in Stockton, NJ.  To view more essays and paintings visit www.themagpie.org