One of my Small People in its New Home

This piece, called Heart (1997/2025, 14 x 7.5 x 3"), is made of annealed wire, hardware cloth, stone, and cotton string. It was recently bought by a dear friend who had a studio near mine in St. Johnsbury, Vermont in the late 1990's. 

 

 It was part of a series called Ethnic Encampments back then (and was on a wooden base, which I've since removed). Most of the pieces from that series have been re-purposed in other work. I made it at the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, Vermont in1997. Here's a (very old!) image of the encampments displayed at the Red Mill Gallery. This piece (one of 2 of that "ethnicity") is close to the front of the line of refugees (oh dear, an issue even back then...).

 

Pieces installed in collector's guest apartment

 A friend who has been collecting my work for many years decided to put a group of my Small People  over the bed in a guest apartment.

 They are interspersed with related 2D work from other artists -- a happy collection of people!

 

FACE in a New Home

 This FACE has a new home, gifted to a wonderful friend who helped me design and build the shelves on which I've been displaying the FACES made over the last few years.

 

 

Here's what it looks like in a previous photo:

 

 And here are the shelves and faces in a melded photo (they haven't ever actually been exhibited in this way...) created by Bryan Pfeiffer:

 

 

 

 

Coming Around Again

 I started this blog in 2008, after living through the mess and destruction the George W. Bush administration had made http://janetvanfleet.blogspot.com/2008/11/elections-over-time-for-new-work.html

 Little did I know that it was going to get even worse, and not that many years down the road.

I have been posting on Instagram for the last several years and so haven't used this blog much, but now that Meta is in bed with the new administration, I don't feel I can be there anymore. This is a shame, because it was wonderful to be connected with artists all over the world. Maybe this is a case of "cutting off your nose to spite your face". We'll see...

 

Hell Dispersed

In September of 2023 I put up my large free-standing installation, A Guided Tour of Dante's Inferno on my land in Cabot, Vermont. You can see some images on Instagram here.  I had it open briefly for people to come visit and then I offered to give individual pieces and parts of the installation to people who were interested. I cut up the painted Styrofoam bases that the figures were mounted on to make individual units that could be taken away. Many people nearby in central Vermont took pieces, and during the summer of 2024 my friend Karen Thomsen from Denmark and Dusty Haller from Rhode Island came and each claimed a piece. Here are some images they sent me of the pieces in their new homes:

Karen took a Usurer from the 7th Circle and it is now in her apartment in Copenhagen:

 

Dusty took a Glutton from the 3rd Circle. Here it is on the "secretary" at her house:

 

 

 

I try to keep a record of where my work goes out into in the world here in this blog!

Website and Instagram

 I haven't posted here on my blog for awhile, but if anyone's looking, I want to announce that I have been on Instagram since January, 2022 and that's where I'm posting current work and happenings. https://www.instagram.com/janetvanfleet/  

Most recently, I've been working on a series of FACES that are mounted on black bases:

You can see more of these on my new (ish) website, https://www.janetvanfleet.com/home

 

Click on the Faces tab to see more!

Fish Servers Find a New Home

Two pieces were sold during the recent exhibit We the People at Green Tara Space in North Hero, in the Champlain Islands. They look pretty happy in their new home!

 

 

 

 

 

 

A New Home

 

 

Spoons has moved to New York City, and is happily presiding over a dining room table there!

 

SNOW Sold

 The piece in the previous post, SNOW, was sold in the silent auction at the Bennington Museum, bringing in $1,651, of which I will get half. I'm a bit sad to not see it anymore (as I didn't have it in the studio that long before delivering it to the museum), but people often ask me if I'm distressed about having work sold and gone. The answer is "No! My artwork is a bit like my children, and we want our children to grow up, possess their own lives, and make their way in the world, not keep them exclusively tethered to us." I make work for the world, and am delighted when it finds its way to a new home.

Have a look at my new website, and the images of all the pieces in this series of People: https://www.janetvanfleet.com/people There are new ones coming along all the time!

Transient Beauty

 I have a piece called SNOW in the Transient Beauty exhibit at the Bennington Museum from November 26 through December 31. Artists responded to the artwork of Snowflake Bentley in a variety of ways.

My piece is made with wood, cascades of white buttons (representing snow), and a plexi-fronted box as the head. Here are some pix:

SPA Celebrate Show

 The annual Celebrate (Members') Show at SPA is opening today! I have lots of cool little things for sale -- dolls, ornaments, nail people. Time to not be serious for a few weeks...

I hope to see you at the Art Social on Saturday, Nov. 13 from 4-6PM.  Guests are required to wear masks.  (No refreshments will be served.)

 

Dissolution Series

 I haven't previously posted all eight pieces from the Dissolution series that was exhibited at the Vermont Supreme Court in 2019, and thought I should do it now! 

The pieces in this suite chronicle the dissolution of a "relationship" between humans and the natural world (represented by animals), from the Peaceable Kingdom beginning to the Armageddon end. The organizing idea was a love story of acquaintance, courtship, marriage, estrangement, and separation, ending in hostility and battle. I also intended the series to resemble the Stations of the Cross, in the sense of offering viewers an opportunity for observation and reflection as they move through the numbered series.

These eight pieces are built on 20-year-old oil-on-board paintings from 1998, which were among those exhibited in my first solo show in Montpelier, at the Arts Council’s Spotlight Gallery! The paintings were stored in my studio for 20 years, until I decided to repurpose them for this exhibit. I sealed them with shellac (a surface treatment made of the secretions of a female insect from India or Thailand, the lac beetle), then collaged over with figures of people and animals made with wine foils (the wrappers at the top of a wine bottle that seal the cork).

I’ve been using wine foils for many years in my work, inspired by the work of the late Vermont artist G. Roy Levin. In a more recent association, my work has affinities with the Ghanaian artist El Anatsui, who makes wall sculptures that employ thousands of caps from bottles of alcoholic beverages. The phrase in vino veritas expresses the idea that wine brings out the truth. In this moment, we are certainly in need of truth, however we can elicit and examine it.

1  The Beginning, 1998/2018, mixed media,  27”x 36”, $1350

 

2  Parnership of Equals, 1998/2019, mixed media,  24” x 32”, $1200

 

3  Mutuality, 1998/2018, mixed media,  30” x 30”, $1200

 

4  Irreconcilable Differences, 1998/2018, 29.5” x 35”, $1400

 

5  Attempted Communication, 1998/2018, mixed media,  36” x 28”, $1400

 

6  Parting Ways, 1998/2018, mixed media,  24” x 33”, $1200 

 

7  Tipping Point, 1998/2018, mixed media,  31” x 31”, $1200

 

8  The End, 1998/2019, mixed media,  36” x 54”, $2700