The Jenni Crain Foundation

Jenni Crain (1991–2021) was an esteemed artist and curator who passed away suddenly due to complications related to Covid-19. She was widely recognized for her original minimalist sculpture and curatorial projects that championed under-recognized women artists as well as for her rigorous scholarship and writing. Crain was a passionate and tireless advocate of artists and art. Throughout her life, she built a vast community of friends, collaborators, and colleagues whose work she drove forward with generosity, sensitivity, and the deep probing intelligence with which she considered the world.

The Foundation preserves her legacy by supporting transformative projects by artists, curators, and writers of any age at early or pivotal stages of their career.

In honor of her memory, The Jenni Crain Foundation provides grants in two areas:
1. Finishing funds toward the completion of a significant project ranging from an exhibition, arts publication, or work of art across disciplines and forms.
2. Support for original research which may include travel, accommodation, and any funds required for accessing or studying materials.

Donations may be mailed to the address below or made online by clicking here.

A fundraising bandana featuring Crain’s work may be purchased by clicking here. An image of the bandana can be viewed by clicking here.

The Jenni Crain Foundation
130 Third Avenue Brentwood, NY 11717
info@JenniCrainFoundation.org

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Jenni Crain

Outdoor Living
Co-curated w. Carey Denniston
Rzeplinski, Brooklyn, NY
Margaret Salmon, Owen Westberg
September 30 – October 1, 2017

The domesticated outdoors demonstrates a distrust of the fate of the natural order. Using gravel, pavers, and sod, the gardener establishes a new natural, a regularity that impedes overgrowth, cross-pollination, rot and decay, in favor of alignment, bed blocking, and alternating blooms. Outdoor living replicates holdover ideas of the indoors—the body eating, tracking, resting. It seeks comfort in the regulation of space. Such control is an illusion, motivated by attraction and the desire to render, to mark, to record, to interject, to grasp.

Outdoor Living presents works by Margaret Salmon and Owen Westberg in the Rzeplinski yard. Projected below the trellis of an active grapevine are two of Salmon's films: “The enemies of the rose" and adjacent, "Bird." Surrounding the yard, a suite of Westberg's plein-air watercolors and oil-on-panel works, some painted on-site, are installed upon the fencing.

Salmon and Westberg produce images of the natural world as if to point towards our desire to grasp its inherent unruliness. On film, flowers are in bloom, their crimsons and violets thrusting in the wind, insects climb and build fanatically, birds fight against the human hand holding it captive. On panel, thickly brushed shadows and oval clouds, exaggerated symmetry, and muddy pastels dominate and redistribute the landscape in an illusory flatness. Together, their works direct our attention to the order of things built and living: the unstable conditions of land; the anxiety of stillness; and the mutability of our own perception.

01-InstallationView
02A-OwenWestberg-picnic

Owen Westberg picnic, 2016. Oil on masonite. 11 x 13 inches

03A-OwenWestberg-diagram

Owen Westberg diagram, 2017. Oil on masonite. 10 x 12 inches

04-InstallationView
05A-OwenWestberg-floraiv

Owen Westberg flora iv, 2017. Oil on masonite. 10 x 12 inches

06A-OwenWestberg-timeshare

Owen Westberg timeshare, 2017. Oil on masonite. 12 x 10 inches

07-InstallationView
08A-OwenWestberg-latejuly

Owen Westberg late july, 2016. Oil on masonite. 10 x 12 inches

09A-OwenWestberg-floraiii

Owen Westberg flora iii, 2017. Oil on masonite. 10 x 12 inches

10-InstallationView
11A-OwenWestberg-gate

Owen Westberg gate, 2016. Oil on masonite. 10 x 12 inches

12-OwenWestberg-Recurrence-InstallationView
13A-OwenWestberg-recurrence

Owen Westberg recurrence, 2017. Oil on masonite. 10 x 12 inches

14-InstallationView
15A-OwenWestebrg-marbleshoulder

Owen Westberg marble shoulder, 2017. Oil on masonite. 18 x 15 inches

16A-InstallationView

Installation view, Owen Westberg watercolor sketches (1), 2017. Watercolors on paper in sketchbook

17-OwenWestberg-watercolor
18-OwenWestberg-watercolor
19A-InstallationView

Installation view, Owen Westberg watercolor sketches (2 & 3), 2017. Watercolors on paper in sketchbooks

20-OwenWestberg-watercolor
21-OwenWestberg-watercolor
22-OwenWestberg-watercolor-installationview
23-OwenWestberg-Watercolor-installationview
24-InstallationView
25A-InstallationView

Installation view, Margaret Salmon The enemies of the rose, 2010 (left) Bird, 2016 (right)

26-InstallationView
27A-MargaretSalmon-Bird

Margaret Salmon Bird, 2016. Filmed on 35 mm on HD. 4 minutes

28A-MargaretSalmon-TheEnemiesoftheRose

Margaret Salmon The enemies of the rose, 2010. 16 mm film transferred to DVD. 5 min 15 seconds, silent

29-MargaretSalmon-TheEnemiesoftheRose
30A-OwenWestberg-agrariancapital-installedindoors

Owen Westberg agrarian capital, 2016. Oil on masonite. 10 x 12 inches