Feature image: “Mary Jones: Coddiwompling”, March 8 – April 13, 2019, at the Tory Folliard Gallery. Image courtesy of Tory Folliard Gallery.
Frank Juárez
One of the joys of experiencing art is connecting the dots. My first introduction to Mary Jones’s work was in a group exhibition at Tory Folliard Gallery in the Historic Third Ward in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Her use of color, composition, mark-making, and handwritten text drew me in. The small scale of these mixed media works provided an intimate space to explore and wonder. Earlier this Spring, I reconnected with her work through an online database, Iowa Artist Directory. Most recently, I returned to the gallery on one of my Saturday art jaunts. As I walked into the gallery, I spotted it immediately and found myself looking at it from a different perspective.
Ingersoll & Grand. Photo: Amee Ellis.
Courtesy of Tory Folliard Gallery.
Becca Sidman, Director of Sales, shares, “Mary’s work has a nostalgic quality that guides the viewer into her paintings. The more time spent with it, the more it stimulates memory by connecting to certain elements. As her use of color lures you into the composition, the text and collage work begin to emerge. Her playfulness provides something that we can all connect with. Her work appeals to people who are attracted to figurative work, abstraction, and collage. Her work embodies her experience, presence, and voice behind each work she creates.”
Jones makes maps of the wilderness of social space. The raw materials come from rambling walks punctuated by stops to draw, write, and take photos. She chooses spaces to move through both familiar and strange. The resulting works layer physical geography with memories and random images that come to mind while walking. The maps are populated with personas combining what she has seen with what she has imagined about encounters with people, places, and things. Details get piled on in the way that life is lived– in steps, notes, beats, breaths, and marks.
Mapping embodies the particularities of perspective– visual, cultural, and emotional. Traditional maps tell us where we are in space. The mapping methodology she uses, deep mapping, aims to capture a sense of place, personal impressions, or the shared experience of a group of people. In other words, mapping is a way of knowing not only where we are but also who we are in a particular space. In mapping where we are, the space becomes a place.
Visit maryjonesart.com to learn more and connect on Instagram at @maryjonesart.
About Frank Juárez
Juárez is a former gallery director, award-winning art educator, artist, author, art coach, and founder/publisher of Artdose magazine.
Juárez brings over two decades of art education and arts management experience organizing local and regional art exhibitions, community art events, facilitating presentations, supporting artists through grant programs, and professional development workshops. This has placed him at the forefront of promoting Wisconsin artists, networking, and attracting regional and national artists to collaborate and exhibit in Wisconsin.