At General Fine Craft, 63 Mill Street in Almonte
September 19 – November 5
Many of you may know and love Jennifer Noxon as a gifted songwriter, performer and leader of the Rhythm & Song Community Choir. The Almonte resident had a previous career as an adult educator and, if you weren’t already aware, she’s been an inspired visual artist for over 30 years.
Jennifer approaches art-making with serious intent and a playful visual intellect. She has always been adventurous with materials and techniques. Using paint on canvas, she has explored abstractions from nature with interesting layers of colour and patterns, and her popular 2015 Almonte Riverwalk Series captures local iconic riverscapes in a digital painting format.
Opening September 21, Paint, Paper and Flotsam is an exhibition of new work that has taken Noxon on quite a different course of exploration.
At the core of this show is the ‘flotsam’ series which she began two years ago. After collecting bits of plastic from Lake Ontario beaches, she constructed playful sculptures that have a sense of humour, irony and story-telling.
There is a more serious side to this work as Jennifer explains, “As I played with these found pieces, I thought a lot about where they might have come from, the effect of discarded plastic on our natural systems, and just how much we depend on plastics in all aspects of our lives. The bright characters tell seemingly simple, even innocent stories – yet the metaphors suggest darker tales of what could happen in the future.”
From the plastic constructions evolved two other series: small acrylic paintings in her signature style and digital photographs folded into a large meandering array. Noxon seems to be playing with the perception of form and the picture plane. She notes that, “I’ve always been intrigued with the place where the two dimensional meets the three dimensional.”
Each of the three series informs the other in wonderfully surprising ways. It’s an intersection of ideas that The General thinks is very exciting.
Please join us for the opening and meet the artist on Thursday September 21 from 7-9pm. www.generalfinecraft.com
