Martin Cid Magazine | MERON ENGIDA HAWKE | Hummingbird

Meron Engida Hawke in her studio, 2023. Courtesy of the artist and Morton Fine Art

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New Paintings and Sculptures by Meron Engida Hawke Showcase Modern Ethiopia through Religious Tableaux

Festooned with flowers and animals imbued with symbolic weight, Engida Hawke’s new exhibition tells the story of market imperialism and feminist resilience in the artist’s homeland

by Art Martin Cid Magazine

May 18, 2023

 Art

Washington, D.C. – Morton Fine Art is pleased to present Hummingbird, an exhibition of mixed-media paintings and sculptures by artist Meron Engida Hawke. Made up of works from the artist’s series “Teff Teffa,” “Ashenda Girl” and “Highlander,” alongside still lifes in a muralist style, the exhibition tackles issues of migration, marginalization and resistance in contemporary Ethiopia. The artist’s second solo show with the gallery, Hummingbird will be on view from May 16 – June 9, 2023 at Morton Fine Art’s Washington, D.C. location (52 O St NW #302).

Thank God there is a river, 2021. 59 x 73 in. Acrylic and oil stick on canvas. Courtesy of the artist and Morton Fine Art

A native of Addis Ababa now living in D.C., Meron Engida Hawke’s artwork explores Ethiopian identity, sustainable agriculture, labor relations and women’s issues in contemporary East Africa. Struck by how the perception abroad of Ethiopia and Africa is consistently framed through media stories of famine, climate crises and war, Engida Hawke explores these issues from the inside, generating subjects in her work that are both archetypal and specific, each of whom embodies the perspective of Ethiopian womanhood while proudly acknowledging the gaze of another.

Deftly weaving contemporary news items and personal interests into her portraits with a symbolist’s shorthand, the artist takes apart and rearranges stereotypical representations of Ethiopia while focusing on the beauty of the country’s traditions and cultures.

Teff Mill 2, 2022. 48 x 81 in. Acrylic and wallpaper on canvas. Courtesy of the artist and Morton Fine Art

Heavily influenced by ancient Ethiopian art, Engida Hawke’s vibrant colors and crisp narrative subjects derive from the murals and religious paintings that populate the walls of Addis Ababa. Creating from memory and imagination and research into her subjects, the artist starts with a basic tableau that she gradually layers with tones, figures and symbolic metonyms. Her recent work involves the development of a mixed-media practice that layers Ethiopian woven fabric onto canvas—an innovation inspired by recent news of Ethiopian clothing being mass manufactured with synthetic materials. Engida Hawke’s inclusion of the handwoven fabric, as a testament to her heritage, shares pictorial space here with animals and pearls—part of the artist’s innate visual lexicon of innocence, forgiveness, elegance and justice. Weaving the weighted symbols of her native culture into increasingly disparate and secular works, Engida Hawke elaborates a narrative that telegraphs from the heart of Ethiopian identity into the cacophony of global media and international affairs.

In the artist’s “Teff Teffa” series, women practice the ancient rite of cultivating teff, a small grain used to make injera, the foundational flatbread of Ethiopian cuisine. The word teff comes from

the Amharic teffa, meaning “lost”—a reference to the fact that the grain is so small that dropping one makes it impossible to find. Teff has been cultivated in Ethiopia for more than 6,000 years, a staple food for over 80 ethnic groups in the region and central part of Ethiopian national identity. Today, teff has grown increasingly expensive to harvest and mill as a result of increasing global demand, as well as regional armed conflict and drought caused by climate change. Engida Hawke references the devastation of proverbial “lost teff” in her backgrounds, dotted with the miniscule seed, while in the foreground she addresses the social and environmental effects of flower farming—a newly inedible cash crop for the region—dependent on its export to Europe and the subservience of women’s labor across eastern Africa.

By contrast, Engida Hawke showcases the underrepresented side of the Ethiopian experience in her “Ashenda Girl” series by depicting women in moments of joy, freedom and righteous resistance. The series title references Ashenda, a colorful religious festival celebrated every August in northern Ethiopia by women and girls. Taking its name from a tall grass that is woven into skirts and worn for the duration of the three-day festival, the Ashenda girls also dress in traditional embroidered dresses, with fine jewelry and braided hair. The celebration is a joyous occasion of song and dance—an opportunity for the embrace of feminine self-expression.

Hummingbird, 2023. 70 x 50 in. Acrylic on canvas. Courtesy of the artist and Morton Fine Art

The exhibition’s title, Hummingbird, comes from a story told by the late Kenyan activist Wangari Maathai, in which a hummingbird shows bravery by fighting a forest fire with only the water that can fit in its beak. The other animals, much larger and more capable, watch with a sense of futility while their habitat burns, but the hummingbird knows that every little bit helps. Engida Hawke connects this story to her personal experience in addressing social and climate issues through her art, and has recently taken to including mixed-media hummingbirds in her mesmerizing compositions of women like her, representing the freedom of empowerment through knowledge.

Meron Engida Hawke (b. Addis Ababa, Ethiopia) creates vibrant tableaus that act as a vehicle for exploring the artist’s personal experiences and Ethiopian cultural identity. Through trust in the mark-making process, Engida has developed a rich visual vocabulary that draws influence from the colors and narratives of ancient Ethiopian art. At the intersections of abstraction and figuration, Engida’s works center a cast of expressive figures who together tell stories of vulnerability, empowerment, and resilience. Fusing memory and imagination, Engida layers tones, symbols and motifs to construct emotive scenes intended to prompt dialogue about migration, diversity and women’s experiences. Eigda Hawke holds a BFA in Fine Art from Addis Ababa University School of Fine Arts and Design. She currently lives and works in Washington, DC.

Morton Fine Art

Founded in 2010 in Washington D.C. by curator Amy Morton, Morton Fine Art (MFA) is a fine art gallery and curatorial group that collaborates with art collectors and visual artists to inspire fresh

ways of acquiring contemporary art. Firmly committed to the belief that art collecting can be cultivated through an educational stance, MFA’s mission is to provide accessibility to museum-quality contemporary art through a combination of substantive exhibitions and a

welcoming platform for dialogue and exchange of original voice. Morton Fine Art specializes in a stellar roster of nationally and internationally renowned artists as well as has an additional focus on artwork of the African and Global Diaspora.

Morton Fine Art LLC

52 O St NW #302, Washington, DC 20001, United States

Available artwork by MERON ENGIDA HAWKE

Art Plugged | MERON ENGIDA HAWKE | Hummingbird

Meron Engida Hawke: Hummingbird

Exhibitions

Meron Engida Hawke: Hummingbird
May 16 – June 9, 2023
Morton Fine Art’s
Washington, D.C. location
(52 O St NW #302)

Hummingbird, an exhibition of mixed-media paintings and sculptures by artist Meron Engida Hawke. Made up of works from the artist’s series “Teff Teffa,” “Ashenda Girl” and “Highlander,” alongside still lifes in a muralist style, the exhibition tackles issues of migration, marginalization and resistance in contemporary Ethiopia.

The artist’s second solo show with the gallery, Hummingbird will be on view from May 16 – June 9, 2023 at Morton Fine Art’s Washington, D.C. location (52 O St NW #302).

Meron Engida Hawke, Thank God there is a river
Courtesy of the artist and Morton Fine Art

A native of Addis Ababa now living in D.C., Meron Engida Hawke’s artwork explores Ethiopian identity, sustainable agriculture, labor relations and women’s issues in contemporary East Africa. Struck by how the perception abroad of Ethiopia and Africa is consistently framed through media stories of famine, climate crises and war, Engida Hawke explores these issues from the inside, generating subjects in her work that are both archetypal and specific, each of whom embodies the perspective of Ethiopian womanhood while proudly acknowledging the gaze of another.

Deftly weaving contemporary news items and personal interests into her portraits with a symbolist’s shorthand, the artist takes apart and rearranges stereotypical representations of Ethiopia while focusing on the beauty of the country’s traditions and cultures.

Heavily influenced by ancient Ethiopian art, Engida Hawke’s vibrant colors and crisp narrative subjects derive from the murals and religious paintings that populate the walls of Addis Ababa. Creating from memory and imagination and research into her subjects, the artist starts with a basic tableau that she gradually layers with tones, figures and symbolic metonyms. Her recent work involves the development of a mixed-media practice that layers Ethiopian woven fabric onto canvas—an innovation inspired by recent news of Ethiopian clothing being mass manufactured with synthetic materials.

Meron Engida Hawke, Teff Mill 2, 2022 48 x 82 in.
Acrylic and wallpaper on canvas
Courtesy of the artist and Morton Fine Art

Engida Hawke’s inclusion of the handwoven fabric, as a testament to her heritage, shares pictorial space here with animals and pearls—part of the artist’s innate visual lexicon of innocence, forgiveness, elegance and justice. Weaving the weighted symbols of her native culture into increasingly disparate and secular works, Engida Hawke elaborates a narrative that telegraphs from the heart of Ethiopian identity into the cacophony of global media and international affairs.

In the artist’s “Teff Teffa” series, women practice the ancient rite of cultivating teff, a small grain used to make injera, the foundational flatbread of Ethiopian cuisine. The word teff comes from the Amharic teffa, meaning “lost”—a reference to the fact that the grain is so small that dropping one makes it impossible to find. Teff has been cultivated in Ethiopia for more than 6,000 years, a staple food for over 80 ethnic groups in the region and central part of Ethiopian national identity.

Today, teff has grown increasingly expensive to harvest and mill as a result of increasing global demand, as well as regional armed conflict and drought caused by climate change. Engida Hawke references the devastation of proverbial “lost teff” in her backgrounds, dotted with the miniscule seed, while in the foreground she addresses the social and environmental effects of flower farming—a newly inedible cash crop for the region—dependent on its export to Europe and the subservience of women’s labor across eastern Africa.

Meron Engida Hawke, Untitled 1,
Courtesy of the artist and Morton Fine Art

By contrast, Engida Hawke showcases the underrepresented side of the Ethiopian experience in her “Ashenda Girl” series by depicting women in moments of joy, freedom and righteous resistance. The series title references Ashenda, a colorful religious festival celebrated every August in northern Ethiopia by women and girls. Taking its name from a tall grass that is woven into skirts and worn for the duration of the three-day festival, the Ashenda girls also dress in traditional embroidered dresses, with fine jewelry and braided hair. The celebration is a joyous occasion of song and dance—an opportunity for the embrace of feminine self-expression.

The exhibition’s title, Hummingbird, comes from a story told by the late Kenyan activist Wangari Maathai, in which a hummingbird shows bravery by fighting a forest fire with only the water that can fit in its beak. The other animals, much larger and more capable, watch with a sense of futility while their habitat burns, but the hummingbird knows that every little bit helps.

Engida Hawke connects this story to her personal experience in addressing social and climate issues through her art, and has recently taken to including mixed-media hummingbirds in her mesmerizing compositions of women like her, representing the freedom of empowerment through knowledge.

https://www.instagram.com/meronengidahawke/

Learn more about: Hummingbird

©2023 Meron Engida Hawke

Available Artwork by MERON ENGIDA HAWKE

ArtAfrica | MERON ENGIDA HAWKE | Hummingbird

New paintings and sculptures by Meron Engida Hawke showcase modern Ethiopia through religious tableaux

EXHIBITION

11 May 2023

Festooned with flowers and animals imbued with symbolic weight, Engida Hawke’s new exhibition tells the story of market imperialism and feminist resilience in the artist’s homeland.

Meron Engida Hawke, Highlander 2, 2023. Acrylic, woven cotton fabric, yarn and pearl on canvas, 51 x 81 in.. Courtesy of the artist and Morton Fine Art.

Morton Fine Art is pleased to present Hummingbird, an exhibition of mixed-media paintings and sculptures by artist Meron Engida Hawke. Made up of works from the artist’s series ‘Teff Teffa’, ‘Ashenda Girl’ and ‘Highlander’, alongside still lifes in a muralist style, the exhibition tackles issues of migration, marginalisation and resistance in contemporary Ethiopia. The artist’s second solo show with the gallery, ‘Hummingbird’ will be on view from the 16th of May until the 9th of June, 2023, at Morton Fine Art’s Washington, D.C.

A native of Addis Ababa now living in D.C., Meron Engida Hawke’s artwork explores Ethiopian identity, sustainable agriculture, labor relations and women’s issues in contemporary East Africa. Struck by how the perception abroad of Ethiopia and Africa is consistently framed through media stories of famine, climate crises and war, Engida Hawke explores these issues from the inside, generating subjects in her work that are both archetypal and specific, each of whom embodies the perspective of Ethiopian womanhood while proudly acknowledging the gaze of another. Deftly weaving contemporary news items and personal interests into her portraits with a symbolist’s shorthand, the artist takes apart and rearranges stereotypical representations of Ethiopia while focusing on the beauty of the country’s traditions and cultures.

Heavily influenced by ancient Ethiopian art, Engida Hawke’s vibrant colours and crisp narrative subjects derive from the murals and religious paintings that populate the walls of Addis Ababa. Creating from memory and imagination and research into her subjects, the artist starts with a basic tableau that she gradually layers with tones, figures and symbolic metonyms. Her recent work involves the development of a mixed-media practice that layers Ethiopian woven fabric onto canvas – an innovation inspired by recent news of Ethiopian clothing being mass manufactured with synthetic materials. Engida Hawke’s inclusion of the handwoven fabric, as a testament to her heritage, shares pictorial space here with animals and pearls – part of the artist’s innate visual lexicon of innocence, forgiveness, elegance and justice. Weaving the weighted symbols of her native culture into increasingly disparate and secular works, Engida Hawke elaborates a narrative that telegraphs from the heart of Ethiopian identity into the cacophony of global media and international affairs.

Meron Engida Hawke, Teff Teffa 9, 2022. Acrylic on canvas, 66 x 49 in. Courtesy of the artist and Morton Fine Art.

In the artist’s ‘Teff Teffa’ series, women practice the ancient rite of cultivating teff, a small grain used to make injera, the foundational flatbread of Ethiopian cuisine. The word teff comes from the Amharic teffa, meaning “lost” – a reference to the fact that the grain is so small that dropping one makes it impossible to find. Teff has been cultivated in Ethiopia for more than 6,000 years, a staple food for over 80 ethnic groups in the region and central part of Ethiopian national identity. Today, teff has grown increasingly expensive to harvest and mill as a result of increasing global demand, as well as regional armed conflict and drought caused by climate change. Engida Hawke references the devastation of proverbial “lost teff” in her backgrounds, dotted with the minuscule seed, while in the foreground she addresses the social and environmental effects of flower farming – a newly inedible cash crop for the region – dependent on its export to Europe and the subservience of women’s labor across eastern Africa.

Meron Engida Hawke, Ashenda girl 4, 2023. Acrylic, woven cotton fabric, yarn and pearl on canvas, 16 x 16 in. Courtesy of the artist and Morton Fine Art

By contrast, Engida Hawke showcases the underrepresented side of the Ethiopian experience in her ‘Ashenda Girl’ series by depicting women in moments of joy, freedom and righteous resistance. The series title references Ashenda, a colourful religious festival celebrated every August in northern Ethiopia by women and girls. Taking its name from a tall grass that is woven into skirts and worn for the duration of the three-day festival, the Ashenda girls also dress in traditional embroidered dresses, with fine jewellery and braided hair. The celebration is a joyous occasion of song and dance – an opportunity for the embrace of feminine self-expression.

The exhibition’s title, ‘Hummingbird’, comes from a story told by the late Kenyan activist Wangari Maathai, in which a hummingbird shows bravery by fighting a forest fire with only the water that can fit in its beak. The other animals, much larger and more capable, watch with a sense of futility while their habitat burns, but the hummingbird knows that every little bit helps. Engida Hawke connects this story to her personal experience in addressing social and climate issues through her art, and has recently taken to including mixed-media hummingbirds in her mesmerising compositions of women like her, representing the freedom of empowerment through knowledge.

Meron Engida Hawke (b. Addis Ababa, Ethiopia) creates vibrant tableaus that act as a vehicle for exploring the artist’s personal experiences and Ethiopian cultural identity. Through trust in the mark-making process, Engida has developed a rich visual vocabulary that draws influence from the colours and narratives of ancient Ethiopian art. At the intersections of abstraction and figuration, Engida’s works centre a cast of expressive figures who together tell stories of vulnerability, empowerment, and resilience. Fusing memory and imagination, Engida layers tones, symbols and motifs to construct emotive scenes intended to prompt dialogue about migration, diversity and women’s experiences. Enigda Hawke holds a BFA in Fine Art from Addis Ababa University School of Fine Arts and Design. She currently lives and works in Washington, DC.

The exhibition will be on view from the 16th of May until the 9th of June, 2023. For more information, please visit Morton Fine Art.

Available Artwork by MERON ENGIDA HAWKE

KATHERINE HATTAM | National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia

ARTIST PAINTING

KATHERINE HATTAM

Free entry

The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia, Fed Square
Level 2

View on map

Katherine Hattam
(b. 1950, Wurundjeri Country / Melbourne. Lives and works in Melbourne)

Katherine Hattam works across painting, drawing, collage, printmaking and sculpture, with her practice frequently interrogating language, particularly the written word, as well as dialects of domesticity, family and the self.

Two-sided and suspended in space, Our list, 2020, continues Hattam’s practice of infusing her works with the objects and influences that have shaped her. Recent works, including this one, have been created in response to Philip Guston’s 1973 painting Pantheon, in which Guston listed a personal canon of European male painters. In Our list, Hattam rewrites the record with a new list resulting from a survey of 200 peers regarding their favourite women artists – Australian and international, living and dead. Reflecting on these works in an essay for the 2020 exhibition Katherine Hattam: The Landscape of Language, Dr Anne Norton writes:

Hattam’s Pantheon is collaborative where Guston’s was individual, and though hers refuses his implicit universalism, hers is larger, encompassing more kinds of work, more spaces, peoples and cultures. Guston’s was an avowal, it sought to settle. Hattam’s is unsettling. Guston’s list is an answer, Hattam’s list questions … Hattam reminds us of the people we do not know, the work we missed, of rents and wounds, elisions and concealments.

Hattam held her first exhibition in 1978 at Melbourne’s Ewing and George Paton Gallery, alongside Helen Frankenthaler, and has exhibited regularly ever since. Her work is held in most of Australia’s major public collections, including those of the National Gallery of Australia, National Gallery of Victoria, Queensland Art Gallery, University of Queensland, Queensland University of Technology, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Art Gallery of South Australia, Deakin and La Trobe Universities, Warrnambool Art Gallery, Monash University of Modern Art, and Bendigo Art Gallery, as well as in private and corporate collections including George Patterson, Minter Ellison, National Bank of Australia, Potter Warburg, Smorgon, the Darling Foundation and RACV. She has won the Banyule and Robert Jacks drawing prizes, and has been shortlisted in the Sulman Prize, the Dobell Drawing Prize, the National Works on Paper prize, and the Arthur Guy and Geelong Gallery painting prizes. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in literature and politics from the University of Melbourne (1974), an Master of Fine Art (Painting) from the Victorian College of the Arts (1992) and a PhD from Deakin University (2004).

Contact Morton Fine Art for additional information and acquisition of KATHERINE HATTAM’s “My Blue Pantheon” (see image below). http://www.mortonfineart.com

Available artwork by KATHERINE HATTAM

VONN CUMMINGS SUMNER | The Washington Post | Second Nature

ART

In the galleries: An artist’s modern visions of a retro cartoon

Review by Mark Jenkins

March 31, 2023 at 6:00 a.m. EDT

“Krazy Pumpkin” by Vonn Cummings Sumner, included in his exhibit “Second Nature.” (Vonn Cummings Sumner/Morton Fine Art)

Seeking an everyman as a focus for his recent paintings, Vonn Cummings Sumner found a cat — or kat, as the word was spelled in George Herriman’s 1913-1944 comic strip, “Krazy Kat.” Sumner had been introduced to Herriman’s work by his teacher, noted painter Wayne Thiebaud, in the 1990s. But it wasn’t until 2020 that Sumner began painting Krazy as the bemused observer of dumpster fires both actual and metaphorical. Two years later, the California artist dispatched the cartoon feline into the great outdoors for the paintings in “Second Nature,” his latest Morton Fine Art show.

The original Krazy Kat was usually portrayed in a highly stylized version of Arizona’s Painted Desert. Summer’s recent paintings place him — or her, as Herriman declined to specify the character’s gender — in greener, more naturalistic climes. Krazy’s cartoonishness contrasts the realistically rendered grass, trees and sky, as well as animals such as the horse Krazy rides in two paintings that echo Degas equestrian sculptures. There are exceptions to this schema: In a few pictures the backdrops are flattened and streamlined in the manner of Matisse, and the most vivid canvas places a tiny Krazy in the surrealistic presence of a massive orange pumpkin with a red sun on the horizon of a fuchsia sky.

Sumner toys with Krazy’s persona, giving him a carrot for a Bugs Bunny-like prop in “What’s Up, Kat?” Yet the foreboding of the dumpster-fire paintings seems to have followed Krazy into Eden, where the cat is sometimes trailed by a snake. Perhaps the serpent’s undulating shape is just a visual echo of Krazy’s tail, which is as jagged as the cartoon lightning bolt that bisects the sky in “Krazy Storm.” In Sumner’s paintings, the symbols are open to interpretation, as they are in the work of another Herriman fan, Philip Guston. (“Second Nature” was scheduled to overlap the current Guston retrospective at the National Gallery of Art.) What’s clear, though, is that Sumner’s Krazy occupies a world that is as uneasy and off-kilter as Herriman’s.

Vonn Cummings Sumner: Second Nature Through April 8 at Morton Fine Art, 52 O St. NW, No. 302. Open by appointment.

Available artwork by VONN CUMMINGS SUMNER

VONN CUMMINGS SUMNER | Art Plugged | Second Nature

Vonn Cummings Sumner: Second Nature

Exhibitions

Vonn Cummings: Second Nature
March 11 – April 8, 2023
Morton Fine Art
52 O St NW #302
Washington, DC 20001

Second Nature is a solo exhibition of new paintings on paper and canvas by artist Vonn Cummings Sumner. First rendering Krazy Kat, George Herriman’s influential comic strip character during the early period of the COVID-19 pandemic, Sumner returns to the wandering, curious avatar with Second Nature, escorting the titular figure through newly verdant, water-pooled landscapes, open spaces and art historical-coded landscapes, longing for escape and a reconnection with Nature. Genderless and endlessly depicted, Krazy Kat stands in for “everyman,” but rarely has their roaming path seemed to follow a strange inner voice that might be its own, but also Sumner’s—raising the question “who’s following who?” as both go about a grand tour of references, past and present.

Krazy Storm (after Giorgione), 2023.
Oil on panel, 24 x 18 in. Courtesy of
Morton Fine Art and the artist

Second Nature finds Krazy Kat (and Sumner) on a heavy, if much-needed retreat, anxiety hanging about and lightened by the exhibition’s antithetical moments of enigma, colour and joy. Sumner’s sixth solo exhibition with the gallery, Second Nature, will be on view from March 11 – April 8, 2023 at Morton’s Washington, D.C. space (52 O St NW#302).

Introduced to Krazy Kat by his longtime mentor and friend, the late artist Wayne Thiebaud, Sumner’s character has become a fertile prompt, both for working through existential atmospheres and more painterly notions of colour, composition, control, gesture and mark-making. Where Sumner’s first body of work with Krazy Kat placed the internationalist “everyman” in horizonless, all-white backgrounds ripe with psychological references, and a subsequent 2022 exhibition watched Krazy Kat pass by inflamed trash cans and looming aerial anvils—partly a response to the time’s deep atmosphere of instability and loss—2023’s Second Nature features Krazy Kat back out in the open world, or perhaps removed from it, tramping through vivid, almost day-glo rendered deserts, forests, fields—and much of Western art history.

Returning back to colour in full force, Second Nature revives Sumner’s ongoing balancing act between “cartoon” and “painting.” Colours surge with an agency of their own, sometimes running counter to the narrative elements of the works. The graphic boldness of Night Bathers’ (2023) rectangular blue and green landscape, touched by two black trees and deep orange moon, is contrasted by the painterly chevron brushstrokes depicting waves on Krazy Kat’s bathing pool. Destabilized by colour, the work could reasonably be decoded as a night for day setting, turning the work on its head—or placing it back in a cartoon and cinematic tradition.

Horse and Rider, 2023. Oil on canvas, 48 x 65 in. Courtesy of
Morton Fine Art and the artist

Belonging to a series of “Bather Kat” works ( River Bather, Green Bathers), these works are new explorations of acrylic paint on paper and may be read for a preoccupation with scrubbing oneself clean, particularly in the aftermath of the past few years and in light of Krazy Kat’s previous adventures with Sumner.

Reverie, 2023. Acrylic on paper, 22.5
x 30.25 in, Courtesy of Morton Fine
Art and the artist

But longer engagement with the works draws out Sumner’s expert, playful eye for form, color and history. Capturing the airy, open tactility of the beach—depicting clouds and a sandy bluff in similarly rough, scratchy applications of paint—Beach Stretch (after Cezanne) (2023) is also a sort of pun, alluding to Cezanne’s famed bathing series. Horse and Rider (2023), drawing from Edgar Degas’ series of horse sculptures, is all speed and movement, the surface paint seeming to blur in fast motion. Grass, tree and horse alike are pulled and smoothed out—except for Krazy Kat’s tail, forever jointed in a “z” shape.

Like that zig-zagging tail, Krazy Kat cuts a pensive path, inviting us to join the existential reverie found in these unfolding spaces of rich forms and loaded marks, where Sumner offers his painterly meditations.

Learn more about: Second Nature

©2023 Vonn Cummings, Morton Fine Art

Art plugged

Art Plugged is a contemporary platform inspired by a relationship with the broader arts communities. We provide our audience with curated insight into the world of art, from exhibitions to artist interviews and more.

Available artwork by VONN CUMMINGS SUMNER.

VONN CUMMINGS SUMNER | Creative Boom

• INSPIRATION
• ART & CULTURE

Vonn Cummings Sumner uses Krazy Kat to explore the natural world in his new series of paintings

© Vonn Cummings Sumner

American artist Vonn Cummings Sumner has revisited the classic cartoon strip character Krazy Kat in his latest solo exhibition, Second Nature, which is currently on view at Morton Fine Art’s Washington, D.C. space.

WRITTEN BY: DOM CARTER

20 MARCH 2023

Krazy Kat is the legendary creation of cartoonist George Herriman, who entertained newspaper audiences daily during the strip’s original run from 1913 to 1944. Thanks to its surreal humour and innovative use of the comic strip format, Krazy Kat is often regarded as the greatest comic series of all time and continues to influence artists to this day.

One such artist is a Los Angeles-based painter and professor of art at Fullerton College in Southern California, Vonn Cummings Sumner. Having previously used Krazy Kat in paintings created during the pandemic, his latest series of works titled Second Nature sees the character follow in everyone else’s footsteps by once again stepping outside and exploring the world around them.

Depicting Krazy Kat walking through forests, swimming in pools and riding horses, Second Nature also sees the enduring figure explore iconography from Western art history. Retaining the sense of existential reverie and anarchy in the original strip, the exhibition also gives Vonn a chance to respond to the current world and follow up on themes he’d established in his previous Krazy Kat paintings.

© Vonn Cummings Sumner

© Vonn Cummings Sumner

The reason for Vonn’s continued fascination with Krazy Kat is partly down to the innocent and hopeless romantic qualities of the character itself. Without a set gender or even a set species, Krazy Kat acts as the perfect blank canvas onto which different topics and concerns can be projected.

“Herriman described Krazy as a ‘sprite’ – so there is something almost mystical or mythological about Krazy: an ideal empathetic effigy,” Vonn tells Creative Boom. “Also, the strip began in 1913, and there is some anarchic kind of energy that it communicates; it’s non-conformist, to say the least. Therefore, it became a kind of cult favourite among artists and writers, intellectuals and eccentrics during the 20th century. So, for me, there is an association with a certain strain of American bohemian counter-culture.”

When he first started using Krazy Kat in his paintings back in 2020, Vonn started to think more deeply about the unique opportunities it presented. “I realised that Krazy Kat is a human-animal hybrid, which is arguably the oldest/most-used subject or theme in human art, going all the way back to cave paintings. I think Krazy Kat (and a lot of our cartoon characters) is part of that lineage.”

© Vonn Cummings Sumner

© Vonn Cummings Sumner

The character made a strong impression on Vonn when he first encountered him. He can even remember exactly where he was. “I was an 18-year-old freshman at UC Davis, sitting in the back of Prof. Wayne Thiebaud’s ART 148/Theory & Criticism class,” he reveals.

“He started class one day with an image of a Krazy Kat comic strip projected on the screen and spoke with obvious affection for this odd, dense, unorthodox cartoon that painters had loved: Willem de Kooning, Richard Diebenkorn, Picasso. That had a huge impact on me, being introduced to Krazy Kat in that setting, at that impressionable stage.

“After class, I went straight to the campus library and checked out their only book on Krazy Kat, an anthology with an introduction by E.E. Cummings. I was obsessed from then on, reading everything I could get my hands on – drawing from it, copying the drawings. There was a real sense of discovery, a whole world of creativity, poetry, humour, and history. Profoundly pleasurable!”

Copying the strip could only satisfy Vonn for so long, though. Even though he loves it and is informed by art history, he says he has no interest in simply recreating something or indulging in nostalgia. “I want to make paintings that are relevant to people now, to communicate something about being alive now,” he explains.

© Vonn Cummings Sumner

© Vonn Cummings Sumner

“Painting is not so much about ‘self-expression’ to me as it is about a kind of self-discovery or self-questioning. So in a way, I am using Krazy Kat as a proxy, a stand-in for myself or for all of us in a larger sense, perhaps. I think that if I try to go too directly towards an issue or subject, then it comes out too literal, too predictable, and too cliche. But, if I can come at something sideways – from an odd angle – then I feel like I can touch on some deeper things. Krazy Kat is so specific and so unusual that it becomes a way of talking about things with some extra layers and some humour.”

Another reason why Vonn finds Krazy Kat so interesting to paint is that everything keeps changing. “The world has obviously been going through many big shifts and changes – culturally, technologically, politically, pandemically, environmentally, etc. – and in the Krazy Kat strip, everything is changing all the time.

“For example, from frame to frame, within each strip, the time of day will change, the landscape/background will change, and the language will change. In Herriman’s Krazy Kat, everything is subject to change all the time. So it feels very appropriate to have Krazy Kat help me process the world.”

© Vonn Cummings Sumner

© Vonn Cummings Sumner

It’s not just the world that’s changed; Vonn’s art style has had to adapt as well. By putting Krazy Kat in the natural world, Vonn has changed not only his colour palettes but also the kinds of situations and settings that the character will experience. And from there, the dynamic of the artwork followed.

“In these paintings, I am trying to find a balance between specific landscapes that I have known intimately in my own life and archetypal/mythological/art-historical landscapes – combining my personal sense memories with the collective cultural memory of art,” he reveals.

“That is the goal, at least. These things are hard to talk about, but essentially when I am painting, I am searching for a feeling, and that feeling is something like ‘strangeness’ or ‘mystery’, something that feels familiar and yet mysterious at the same time.

“There is a richness, I believe, from the kind of rhyming that can happen with other paintings and stories from art history. Just like a writer writes in the context of all the other things they have read, or a musician composing in relation/reaction to all of the music they have heard/played – I am making paintings in the context of all the other paintings that I have seen. I get a lot of creative energy from that interaction.”

© Vonn Cummings Sumner

© Vonn Cummings Sumner

As for why Krazy Kat continues to appeal to wider audiences after all these years, Vonn reckons it’s because the strip is so inventive. “I would place Herriman up there with Louis Armstrong and Walt Whitman on the shortlist of American originals. I could go on and on about that with comic lovers.

“But from a more general audience point of view, I think there is something special about Krazy Kat as a character, and I think it has something to do with ambiguity and vulnerability. Krazy Kat is not a ‘cat’ and not a ‘human’, and not a ‘boy’ or a ‘girl’ in any kind of set way. That kind of non-binary ambiguity has great energy somehow. It is very inclusive, allowing anyone to identify and empathise with Krazy.

“The world around Krazy Kat is full of change, danger, and conflict, but Krazy stays totally sincere and open-hearted. Who wouldn’t love that?”

Second Nature is on view until 8 April 2023 at Morton’s Washington, D.C. space (52 O St NW #302).

Available artwork by VONN CUMMINGS SUMNER

JENNY WU | Stirworld

Art

6mins. read

Jenny Wu’s sculptural paintings are an extension of her time-based practice

The exhibition Ai Yo, by Chinese artist Jenny Wu at Morton Fine Art, is a seamless flow of composition, colour, control, and a chance at intersecting maths and art.

by Dilpreet Bhullar

Published on : Mar 06, 2023

Morton Fine Art, an art gallery based in Washington DC, United States, is showcasing Chinese multimedia artist Jenny Wu’s sculptural paintings, rooted in her time-based practice, with the exhibition, Ai Yo! Displaying close to 20 new works by the artist, the exhibition underscores her engagement with latex print. Overriding ‘mastery’ with ‘discovery,’ the works act as sites to survey the nuances of composition, colour, control, and chance. For Wu, who is academically trained as an architect, conceptual ideas of construction and embodiment run deep, setting the tone for the final composition of her sculptural paintings. Consequently, what viewers witness in the exhibition are artworks that serve both as ‘built objects’ and ‘records of labour, gesture, accident,’ questioning the conventional framework of paintings and sculptures. 

Briefly Inhabit a Fictional World, 2022, latex paint and resin on woodImage: Courtesy of Morton Fine Art and Jenny Wu

Each work is made with a silicon surface, over which Wu dispenses thick coats of latex paint. As soon as a layer of paint dries, the Chinese artist pours the next layer of latex. What we see, then, is a spectrum of colour that Wu breaks into small cuts, highlighting colourful cross-sections, often touched by chance elements like cracking. Furthermore, these cross-sections act as building blocks of relief. The final composition of wood panels is put together by these pieces. Interestingly, the play between ‘serendipity and planning’ removes hints of the original setting of paint, recontextualising it in a new form. 

Hello to That One Person Who Nods Along Encouragingly During Presentations, 2022, latex paint and resin on wood panelImage: Courtesy of Morton Fine Art and Jenny Wu

Wu’s artistic practice is “underpinned by transformation and embodying time,” states a press release; in an interview with STIR, Wu elaborates on this, “The original format of the paint is liquid, but through the process of pouring, waiting, pouring again, waiting again, and then finally cutting and glueing, the paint is transformed into a solid form. What started as separate colours on different buckets, ends up having a conversation on these wood panels. Each time a layer of paint dries, it records time spent. The layers are not always the same thickness, and sometimes the paint cracks during drying or the next layer will steep through the previous one. All of those elements are on full display in the finished work.”

It’s Not Finished But I Am, 2022, latex paint and resin on wood panelImage: Courtesy of Morton Fine Art and Jenny Wu

The material, latex, has an inherent quality of being fragile, bound to throw challenges to visual artists who employ it as a key element. Wu confirms that in the early stages of her career as an artist, she found the crack extremely challenging, but gradually she learned to let the paint be—appreciating and embracing moments of imperfection. “I am also learning how different paint sheen, room temperature, and airflow can affect the cracking. Liquid latex paint might be fragile, but thick, dried latex paint is very dense and hard to cut by hand. My purlicue muscle has grown a lot on my right hand,” admits Wu. 

Jenny WuImage: Courtesy of Morton Fine Art and Jenny Wu

Significantly, the titles of the sculptural paintings are central to the practice. Functioning as reflections of the methods Wu undertakes, to reorient the essentials of the material, for instance—Too Heavy to Carry to the British Museum; 70 Year Old Intern Waiting for His First Real Job; Hello to That One Person Who Nods Along Encouragingly During Presentations. Social networking sites such as Twitter, too, have been a source for the titles of the works. The humour and constructive value in the title of the art exhibition—Ai Yo! is unmissable. It carries regional expression and context, for the artist who hails from Nanjing in China, where the meaning of Ai Yo! is determined by a way of articulation, translating to anything between ‘impressed’ to ‘suspicious.’ 

Furthermore, when sculptural paintings are abstract and the titles are non-descriptive, Wu opines, “The idea that titles should create more space, and not point out the obvious, emerged a decade ago, when I bought house paint and came across paints named Va-Va Voom or Yeah Baby. The titles come from social media posts, usually comments on life in Washington D.C. at times having rings of academic or sometimes political. The titles function as a personal, minimal diary, emerging around the time I nearly finish a piece. Hello to That One Person Who Nods Along Encouragingly During Presentations is about appreciating that person and being that person for others.”

Jennny Wu at work

Video: Courtesy of Morton Fine Art and Jenny Wu

An artist and educator, Wu’s artistic practice is recognition of the ‘sensational and perceptual properties of materiality,’ only to recontextualise it in a new light to see the unseen. Wu is hopeful that the audience will see the intersections of maths and art while watching the sculptural paintings in the exhibition. Exploring patterns and moments of surprises within, experiencing the in-betweenness of painting and sculpture, exploring space from the physical work to its title, recalling the passing of time. “At the end of the day, I can have intentions and goals, but once you stand in front of the art, you are creating a new relationship between you and the work, and I can never be part of it,” shares Wu. 

The exhibition Ai Yo! by Jenny Wu is on view at Morton Fine Art, Washington DC until March 8, 2023.

About Author

Dilpreet Bhullar

Contributor

Writer and researcher, Dilpreet Bhullar shuttles between New Delhi and Mumbai, India. With an MPhil in Comparative Literature (University of Delhi), she has been the recipient of the Alliance for Historical Dialogue and Accountability Fellowship (Columbia University, New York) and International Centre For Advocates Against Discrimination Fellowship, New York. Her writings have appeared in Art Basel, Ocula, Routledge, criticalcollective.in, thirdtext.org, to name a few. Currently, she is the Editorial Manager of the magazine TAKE, which is dedicated to South Asian contemporary arts.

Available artwork by JENNY WU

VONN CUMMINGS SUMNER | Second Nature

Morton Fine Art is pleased to announce Second Nature, a solo exhibition of new paintings on paper and canvas by artist Vonn Cummings Sumner. First rendering Krazy Kat, George Herriman’s influential comic strip character, during the early period of the COVID-19 pandemic, Sumner returns to the wandering, curious avatar with Second Nature, escorting the titular figure through newly verdant, water-pooled landscapes, open spaces and art historical-coded landscapes, longing for escape and a reconnection with nature. Genderless and endlessly depicted, Krazy Kat stands in for “everyman,” but rarely has their roaming path seemed to follow a strange inner voice that might be its own, but also Sumner’s—raising the question “who’s following who?” as both go about a grand tour of references, past and present.

Second Nature Oil Paintings and Works on Paper by VONN CUMMINGS SUMNER March 11th – April 8th, 2023 Opening reception 2-4pm on Saturday, March 11th, 2023.Please RSVP to info@mortonfineart.com. Contact the gallery for viewing by appointment, price list, additional information and acquisition. (202) 628-2787 (call or text) info@mortonfineart.com Available Artwork by VONN CUMMINGS SUMNER

Kat Hole, 2023, 18″x18″, oil on panel

About Second Nature

Introduced to Krazy Kat by his longtime mentor and friend, the late artist Wayne Thiebaud, Sumner’s character has become a fertile prompt, both for working through existential atmospheres and more painterly notions of color, composition, control, gesture and mark making. Where Sumner’s first body of work with Krazy Kat placed the internationalist “everyman” in horizonless, all-white backgrounds ripe with psychological references, and a subsequent 2022 exhibition watched Krazy Kat pass by inflamed trash cans and looming aerial anvils—partly a response to the time’s deep atmosphere of instability and loss—2023’s Second Nature features Krazy Kat back out in the open world, or perhaps removed from it, tramping through vivid, almost day-glo rendered deserts, forests, fields—and much of Western art history. Krazy Pumpkin, 2022, 18″x24″, oil on canvas

Night Bather 1, 2023, 22.5″x30.25″, acrylic paint on paper

Returning back to color in full force, Second Nature revives Sumner’s ongoing balancing act between “cartoon” and “painting.” Colors surge with an agency of their own, sometimes running counter to the narrative elements of the works. The graphic boldness of Night Bather 1 (2023) rectangular blue and green landscape, touched by two black trees and deep orange moon, is contrasted by the painterly chevron brushstrokes depicting waves on Krazy Kat’s bathing pool. Destabilized by color, the work could reasonably be decoded as a night for day setting, turning the work on its head—or placing it back in a cartoon and cinematic tradition. Belonging to a series of Bather Kat works (River Bather, Green Bathers), these works are new explorations of acrylic paint on paper and may be read for a preoccupation with scrubbing oneself clean, particularly in the aftermath of the past few years and in light of Krazy Kat’s previous adventures with Sumner.

Reverie, 2023, 22.5″x30.25″, acrylic paint on paper But longer engagement with the works draws out Sumner’s expert, playful eye for form, color and history. Capturing the airy, open tactility of the beach—depicting clouds and a sandy bluff in similarly rough, scratchy applications of paint—Beach Stretch (after Cezanne) (2023) is also a sort of pun, alluding to Cezanne’s famed bathing series. Horse and Rider (2023), drawing from Edgar Degas’ series of horse sculptures, is all speed and movement, the surface paint seeming to blur in fast motion. Grass, tree and horse alike are pulled and smoothed out—except for Krazy Kat’s tail, forever jointed in a “z” shape.Like that zig-zagging tail, Krazy Kat cuts a pensive path, inviting us to join the existential reverie found in these unfolding spaces of rich forms and loaded marks, where Sumner offers his painterly meditations.

Horse and Rider, 2022-2023, 48″x65″, oil on canvas

Available artwork by VONN CUMMINGS SUMNER

About VONN CUMMINGS SUMNER

Photo credit: Gabriela Castillo

Vonn Cummings Sumner grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, the son of a picture framer and a school teacher. He attended the University of California, at Davis, where he earned both a Bachelor’s degree and an M.F.A. in painting, with highest honors. While at Davis he worked closely with celebrated painter and educator Wayne Thiebaud, both as a student and as a teaching assistant. Upon graduating in 2000, Vonn moved to New York City, where he painted and worked in museums, including the Guggenheim. In 2002, he moved to the greater Los Angeles area, where he currently lives and works.Vonn’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally since 1998. He has been featured/reviewed in publications including New American Paintings, Elle Décor, Hi Fructose, San Francisco Chronicle, The Washington Post, The Huffington Post, L.A. Weekly, Art Ltd., Riviera magazine, The Painter’s Table, Boom magazine, and many others. His work has been the subject of two solo museum shows: at the Riverside Art Museum in California, and the Phillips Museum of Art in Pennsylvania. Most recently, Vonn was featured in the first museum survey tracing the influence of Wayne Thiebaud on contemporary artists (Wayne Thiebaud Influencer: A New Generation) at the Manetti Shrem Museum of Art on the campus of the University of California, Davis.He is a Professor of Art at Fullerton College in Southern California and has been represented by Morton Fine Art since 2010.

About Morton Fine Art

Founded in 2010 in Washington, DC by curator Amy Morton, Morton Fine Art (MFA) is a fine artgallery and curatorial group that collaborates with art collectors and visual artists to inspire freshways of acquiring contemporary art. Firmly committed to the belief that art collecting can becultivated through an educational stance, MFA’s mission is to provide accessibility to museum-quality contemporary art through a combination of substantive exhibitions and a welcomingplatform for dialogue and exchange of original voice. Morton Fine Art specializes in a stellarroster of nationally and internationally renowned artists as well as has an additional focus onartwork of the African and Global Diaspora. Morton Fine Art founded the trademark *a pop-up project in 2010. *a pop-up project is MFA’smobile gallery component which hosts temporary curated exhibitions nationally. Gallery hours: By appointment only. Morton Fine Art 52 O St NW #302 Washington, DC 20001 (202) 628-2787 info@mortonfineart.com www.mortonfineart.com

JENNY WU’s “Ai Yo!” | Reviewed by Christine Ji for The Georgetown Voice

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LEISURE

Ai Yo!: Jenny Wu’s exhibit brings new energy to Morton Fine Art

By Christine Ji

Published March 2, 2023

Courtesy of Morton Fine Art, Photo credit: Jarrett Hendrix

Once a warehouse, the unassuming brick building sitting in the corner of NoMa on 52 O Street is now home to a variety of art studios and galleries. One of them is Morton Fine Art, which just launched Ai Yo!, a selection of 21 sculptural paintings by artist Jenny Wu. The gallery is spacious and well lit, and the walls are decked with Wu’s colorful works. I was not entirely sure what a sculptural painting entailed, but I was curious to learn more. 

“Hundreds of people came for the opening day,” Amy Morton, curator of Morton Fine Art, said. I can see why: the works are fun and unconventional. Wu creates her art by pouring layers of latex paint on top of each other, a technique that she told the Voice took her almost a decade of trial and error to develop. Once the layers have dried—a process which can take up to four months—Wu slices the sheets into varying sizes and meticulously rearranges them on top of a wooden panel to create patterns. She then applies a resin coating over the whole contraption to add a glossy finish. The result is many colorful, mosaic-esque creations of varying color schemes and patterns. 

Wu’s creative combination of painting and sculpture makes her work quite the treat to see in person, as one can more closely see the textures and topography created by the latex chunks. The drying and cutting process leads to cracks and imperfections in the individual latex units, meaning no two fragments are identical. 

“The paint crinkles quickly, and the liquid paint becomes something I can hold,” Wu said. 

The centimeter-sized latex cube sample Morton hands me to examine resembles a vibrant chunk of sedimentary rock or a soil specimen. It has the quiet elasticity of a bouncy ball or firm eraser. Considering that Wu uses these three dimensional units to create her visual art as opposed to a more traditional medium like paint, it is clear “sculptural painting” is an apt term to describe her work. By using these latex layers as her instrument of creation, Wu liquifies the boundaries between the two media. 

“They really need to be experienced in person, because it is very hard to capture the textures and colors with just a photo,” Morton said. 

Regarding the title of the exhibit, Wu explains that the phrase Ai Yo! is an interjection used in many different situations in her hometown in China, from communicating feelings of awe to displeasure. 

“The meaning depends on the context. It is both general and specific,” Wu said.  “I think most human beings, when they look at those four letters together, they can pronounce it in some way, even if they don’t speak Chinese. You can pronounce it any way you want, as long as it adds emotion.” 

The inclusive and welcoming nature of the exhibit title leaves a lot of space for viewers to interpret the pieces, proving that Wu’s art is something that transcends language barriers. 

After going to graduate school at American University, Wu found that there were more galleries and organizations focused on promoting smaller artists here in D.C. compared to other places. Given the political and international significance of D.C., Morton remarks that it’s “important to keep the conversation expanding through art and push museum tipping points.” Galleries like Morton Fine Arts and the artists that they partner with are critical in continuing to expand the boundaries of art and make meaningful statements about the world we live in. 

Wu’s mission complements that of Morton Fine Art curator Amy Morton’s well, resulting in a synergistic collaboration. Morton chooses her artist partners with careful deliberation, looking for “substantive artwork that is both timeless and timely.” Wu’s work fits the bill, leaving a lasting impression through the unique medium and jarring titles. The political overtones of her work reflect aspects of the local cultural climate, arising naturally out of the close proximity to Capitol Hill. Both Morton and Wu agree that the D.C. art scene is not as bustling or developed as, say, New York City, but the city is fertile ground for emerging artists. 

The artwork titles are equally delightful and thought-provoking as the visual components. Wu draws inspiration for these creative titles from Twitter, Instagram, and other forms of social media. “I want my titles to be more abstract, rather than purely descriptive, so they can create more space,” says Wu. 

Though all of these pieces are abstract, their titles provide much food for thought that prompts the onlooker to think about the pieces more deeply. Some titles are humorous, like “70 Year Old Intern Waiting for His First Real Job” (2022). For this piece, Wu has arranged long warm toned strips with slices of green in the middle into hexagons, juxtaposing the chaos of the latex strips with the order of the polygons for a sense of contained frustration.  Others are damning, like “Spent $50.4 Million on TV Ads to Brag About Giving Local Businesses A Total of $100,000” (2022). This piece is an amalgamation of small red, white, and blue pieces that emanates a more chaotic, overtly political energy.

“Ruthkanda Forever” (2022) and “Carefully Editing an Email Response” (2021) stand out in particular. The latex layers that make up “Ruthkanda Forever” are varying shades of blue with the occasional yellow stripe, arranged in a lightly undulating formation. From a distance, the piece looks like gently rolling ocean waters reflecting moonlight, which, when combined with the title, perhaps represents how our collective pop culture consciousness has digested and lionized RBG and the Black Panther franchise. “Carefully Editing an Email Response” features paint strata delicately arranged in tessellating hexagons, resembling the rigid and meticulous process of combing through a professional email for typos. Other interesting titles include “$1200 That Should Be More Than Enough” (2022) and “I Will Not Get Bit By Capitol Fox” (2022). Georgetown students are sure to get a kick out of the latter, considering the heavy political preprofessional inclinations of the general community. 

One way Wu pushes artistic boundaries is by exploring different usages of color.

“Right now, the way I choose colors is more based on the aesthetic. Like, if I do some purple with some blue, a little hint of orange might look good in there based on the similarity of the colors. But I want to explore more ways of combining colors and patterns together,” Wu said.

Whatever direction Wu takes her work in, she will continue to push boundaries and set new creative benchmarks. Any vaguely art-curious Georgetown students should be sure to take advantage of the opportunities we have in DC and explore the unique flavors of local art here.

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Christine Ji
Christine is a senior in the MSB majoring in Finance and minoring in History. She harbors unhinged opinions on goldfish, Garfield, and The Strokes.

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More: art exhibit, jenny wu, morton fine art, museum review

Available artwork by JENNY WU