Jenny Fine brings "Flat Granny and Me: A Procession in My Mind" to Stephen Smith Fine Art
Stephen Smith Fine Art is proud to present:
Jenny Fine – Flat Granny and Me: A Procession in My Mind
Fine's installation features: photography; performances with costumed characters, props, and set-pieces created specifically for this production; and live musical accompaniment by Jason Staebler of Good Buddy with other special guest musicians.
There are four opportunities to experience this live event:
Friday, April 7, 2017 6-8 pm
Saturday, April 8, 2017 12-2 pm
Friday, April 14, 2017 6-8 pm
Saturday, April 15, 2017 12-2 pm
Jenny Fine will give a talk about her work at Stephen Smith Fine Art on Sunday, April 9, 2017 at 1 pm.
*All events are free and open to the public.
During our presentation of Flat Granny and Me: A Procession in My Mind, UAB students from Fine’s current class, The Collected Narrative, will have their own collaborative installations on view in our second-floor studio.
Jenny Fine - Flat Granny as a Costume No. 1, 2012-2014, (archival pigment print)
Fine describes her work in the following excerpts from her website:
“I photograph my family.
“Photographing my grandmother for the last ten years of her life, I often considered her my collaborator. Since her death, creating alongside her still feels like a necessary part of my process. Inspired by Victorian traditions of post-mortem photography, the photographic stand-in, and the contemporary Flat Daddy (photographic cut-outs of deployed soldiers inserted into the family while the soldier is away at war), I created ‘Flat Granny’ as a stand-in for my grandmother.
“’Flat Granny’ began as a life-sized cardboard cutout of my grandmother made from the photographs I took of her while she was alive. To reanimate her still image, I turned ‘Flat Granny’ into a costume. Flat Granny and Me is an ongoing series of performances that take place within constructed environments shaped by early cinematic devices and the colliding ‘mindscapes’ of my family’s stories. A Procession in My Mind reimagines the parade route my grandmother took as Enterprise, Alabama's 1968 Woman of the Year - inviting the viewer to step inside the photograph, inside the story, not knowing fully what has happened or what might happen next.
“A Procession in My Mind is a collision of the agricultural history of my hometown of Enterprise, Alabama (‘City of Progress’ and home to the Boll Weevil Monument) with my family’s present day relationship to the landscape of our south Alabama farm. This live theatrical performance and room-sized diorama began as a re-imagining of the year my grandmother was named Enterprise, Alabama’s ‘Woman of the Year’. Along with all the beauty queens and decorated city officials in the parade that year, she rode down Main Street, her float clumsily swerving around the Boll Weevil Monument while she waved to the crowd below.”
Jenny Fine - Hello Granny No. 3, 2012 (archival pigment print)
Jenny Fine received a BFA from the University of Alabama and an MFA from The Ohio State University. In 2001, Fine taught at China’s University of Geosciences in Wuhan, China. In 2002, she spent the summer working at Susana Homes Orphanage and Women’s Shelter in Nigeria. Fine was awarded a National Windgate Fellowship from the Center for Craft, Creativity and Design in 2006 and a Fergus Memorial Scholarship from The Ohio State University in 2009. She taught art at The Ohio State University in 2011, and the same year was selected as an Artist-in-Residence by The Wellington School in Columbus, Ohio, and was awarded an artist residency in Dresden, Germany by the Greater Columbus Arts Council. Fine is currently an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Art and Art History at The University of Alabama at Birmingham.
“Flat Granny and Me: A Procession in My Mind” (2015 performance photo by Kate Farmer)
Jenny Fine has had solo exhibitions at the Kentuck Gallery in Tuscaloosa, Alabama; City Art Center in Delaware, Ohio; Geh8 in Dresden, Germany; Dublin Arts Council in Dublin, Ohio; The Walnut Gallery in Gadsden, Alabama; The Sculpture Center in Cleveland, Ohio; Children’s Museum of the Arts in New York, New York; and the Wiregrass Museum of Art, in Dothan, Alabama. Selected group exhibitions include: the Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, Ohio; Wiregrass Museum of Art; The Contemporary Art Center in Cincinnati, Ohio; and the Mobile Museum of Art in Mobile, Alabama.
Flat Granny and Me: A Procession in My Mind (2015 performance photo by Doug Clark)
Interview with Jenny Fine on PBS station WOSU, 12/24/2014 - https://vimeo.com/94307177
Flat Granny and Me: A Procession in My Mind promotional performance video - https://vimeo.com/106022571
Stephen Smith Fine Art congratulates Jenny Fine and Celestia Morgan on the inclusion of their work in the exhibition, Contemporary Alabama Photography at the Mobile Museum of Art from March 10-August 27, 2017. The exhibition is curated by Richard McCabe, photography curator of the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans, Louisiana, and is part of the Alabama Bicentennial celebration of statehood. Celestia Morgan's series Passage will be featured at Stephen Smith Fine Art later this year.
Stephen Smith Fine Art specializes in cutting edge modern and contemporary fine art with a primary focus on artists whose work engages social issues. Our mission is to share what we believe to be some of the most important and inspiring artists today. Located in a silent-film era theater in historic downtown Fairfield - ten minutes from the Birmingham Museum of Art - Stephen Smith Fine Art strives to cultivate a culture of exploration and art appreciation, and supports public art initiatives throughout the Greater Birmingham area.