Review

"Promoting Kindheartedness," Oil on Paper.

Jennifer Jarnot
Reconstructing the Paint-by-Number

9 a.m.-5 p.m.

Lawrence Arts Center
940 New Hampshire St.
Lawrence, KS
785.843.2787

Hours: 9 a.m.-9 p.m. Monday-Thursday, 9 a.m.-5 p.m., Friday-Sunday.
Runs through: Oct. 1

Artist's site: http://www.jennjarnot.com
Gallery site: http://www.lawrenceartscenter.com

When I was ten, give or take a year, I was given a paint-by-numbers set. The idea was that by putting the right color of paint into the corresponding numbered area, I would produce what looked on the box to be a nice picture of a tall-masted sailing ship.

The result looked just like ... well, just like something produced by a preadolescent with highly questionable motor skills.

"Real art" and "paint-by-numbers" are largely incompatible phrases. Largely, but not entirely, as Jennifer Jarnot's show at the Lawrence Arts Center demonstrates.

Jarnot has not used real kits to produce the works in Reconstructing the Paint-by-Number. She adheres faithfully, however, to the basic concepts.

The paint-by-number style reduces and abstracts the image down to essential shapes and colors, ridding the work of the excessive virtuosity of traditional rendering while still conveying an overall pictorial sense of what is depicted, she writes. I am fascinated by the utter simplicity of form and color as well as the economy of means of this particular style. The crisply delineated shapes also facilitate the transition of stacked, overlapping, or even incomplete images as an overall surface further enhancing the patterned, almost quilt-like nature of the work.

Instead of tall ships and trees, though, Jarnot's paintings are crammed full of nostalgic pop kitsch — some of it instantly recognizable and some maddenengly half-familiar.

Encouraging Kindheartedness, today's featured image, includes the iconic face of Howdy Doody, and the upper parts of "Muffler Man," the big fiberglass guy who can still be found along America's roadsides. The other elements might leap out at some people, depending on when they grew up or their affinity for retro stuff, but they're not immediately identifiable to this late Baby Boomer.

It's the sort of "Hey, I know that" feeling that runs through the Zippy the Pinhead comic strip. But unlike Zippy creator Bill Griffith, who often used the strip to explore the shelf life of fads and the fickle nature of pop culture, Jarnot is primarily interested in how the images of the mid-20th Century worked their way into collective consciousness.

My recent paintings take their cue from my fascination for the nostalgia of popular culture, particularly those items that were influential, i.e., the stuff of one’s childhood, toys, books, and games, she writes. Fascinating to me is the fact that these items were largely stand-ins for the “real world”; houses, automobiles, people, animals, etc, thereby allowing me to create a narrative that is culturally relevant using images that appear, at least on the surface, to be more comforting, accessible, and less threatening.

In that last phrase, Jarnot sells her work short. It's not merely "less threatening." It's actively fun, without sacrificing the thought-provoking and resonant aspects. And while it's not likely to spark a second "paint by numbers" craze, Jarnot's show does prod viewers (in an entirely engaging fashion) to think about the things that filled their own formative years.

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