You Have to Kiss a Lot of Frogs to Meet the Prince Print

1942 United StatesJanna Stern is an inveterate artist whose prolific body of work is celebrated for her ability to combine compelling imagery with a didactic under-current. Deftly drawing the often elusive line between art and science, Stern offers up visual accounts of prevalent social issues plaguing our modern society with sophisticated intellect and a profound compassion for the human condition. ; ; Artist Statement My artistic process begins with collecting salvaged colloquial objects, photographs, scraps of text, and dismantled remnants of previous works. Each object is carefully selected for its unconventional beauty and quality of mystery when separated from its conventional context. I find a coffee stain on a discarded playbill or the wear on the fold of an old map both intriguing and exquisite. I am fascinated by how ordinary words manifest a divergent visceral impact when translated into alternative type styles and languages. A found family vacation snapshot will maintain its sense of nostalgia but is nearly immaterial without its subjects to elaborate its story. I find creating harmony between these inherently disharmonious objects a fascinating practice. Their connection may actually be their seeming disconnection. It is my challenge to find a relationship among them, and then place these objects in a way that gives them a new purpose. In reconstructing the objects’ significance or former collective meaning I am walking backwards on sacred ground. The result may be unsettling, but that is my work’s greatest potential and promise; a new way to view the world. I admittedly feel an enormous pressure to explore every facet of what can be done with each object, thought, or photograph, and allow it to speak, sometimes even shout, a fresh significance. Old world meet the new. Artist Statement A piece of art, much like a person, is the totality of the experience of its ingredients. All my chosen objects have a place in the past and I redefine their history not only by their arrangement, but through the modern world’s most expanding technology-- the computer. I digitally collage elements, adding colors and effects to heighten their visual impact. Each art piece becomes an interactive process of an experimentation of object and technique.