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

09.48 – 06.18
Baba Yaga, Hudson, NY
May 12 – June 12, 2018

The southern facing room in the third floor apartment of 426 Warren Street has been emptied of its couch, music stand, books, desk, chairs, utensils, and apparatus for the duration of 09.48 – 06.18. The exhibition takes its title from the date stamped on the back of the photograph now hung in place of a painting gifted to the apartment's occupant by the painter who is himself a close friend and the date through which the works will remain on view in this room in Hudson, New York. The span of these dates is, more or less, that of an individual life.

The southern facing room in the third floor apartment of 426 Warren Street has three windows, which overlook the town's main street. These windows could be considered the defining characteristic of this room now stripped bare of its occupants' belongings, which have been replaced by the photograph dated 09.48 and a sculpture dated 2018. At about 5:30/6 PM - this time of the year, cloud coverage aside - their images are cast across the space, settling on and around the sculpture set on the floor between the doorway of entry and these three southern facing windows themselves.

The dimensions of this sculpture are taken from the doorway of the space in which it was last placed. In its previous position, one third of the sculpture's surface was fitted with a second component hugging and slipping over the corresponding portion of its bottom bed. One third of this bottom portion of this single sculpture slipped into this second component, which became one third of its surface. Here, in the southern facing room of the third floor apartment at 426 Warren Street, two thirds of the bottom piece of this single sculpture are covered by a second component that now hugs and slips over it. The sculpture is presented in this second state, but eventually, it will likely be shown in a third - the bottom portion of this single sculpture sitting, fully exposed. This sculpture is in a continued state of transition; not unlike the windows and door that open and close between which it sits and from which forms in general its own form was conceived. For now, this sculpture remains untitled, its name to be defined by the collective spaces in which it will sit and so on forward.

The photograph too remains title-less. Its reference instead is adopted from the name printed on its back, in addition to the date, which reads 'Valeria Home'. The image itself is of a landscape taken in portrait format. Towards the center of the photograph's frame are two trees, their images are cast on the surface of the body of water in which they sit on an island; not unlike the windows, whose own images travel throughout the southern facing room in which this photograph is now hung in the third floor apartment at 426 Warren Street.

Emily Daggett Smith (B. 1987, Boston, MA) performed Kaija Saariaho’s (B. 1952, Helsinki, FI) Nocturne (1994) for solo violin, May 12th, 9 PM.

Press release takeaway designed by Nicholas Weltyk.

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Jenni Crain Untitled (5) (Valeria Home), 1948/2018. Silver gelatin print. 11 x 9 3/4 inches (framed)

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Jenni Crain Untitled (4), 2018. Baltic birch plywood, cotton canvas and bass wood. 9 1/8 x 81 1/2 x 34 inches

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Emily Daggett Smith performing Kaija Saariaho’s Nocturne (1994) for solo violin.