Jayna Mikolaitis: Oh, How the Times Have Tenderized Me

"Oh, How the Times Have Tenderized Me leans into humor, folk tales, fables, and garden metaphors to examine the ways in which we try to grow closer to nature. This exhibition presents paintings, drawings, and plush soft sculptures that fuse domestic imagery with scenes from the outdoors. Elongated figures reappear in the work and are shown mimicking or playfully mocking nature. In the absence of a figure, nature is presented as manicured, orderly, and tame. I think about these figures—and their absence—in the context of Robin Wall Kimmerer’s words. She writes about species loneliness and describes it as “a deep, unnamed sadness stemming from estrangement from the rest of Creation, from the loss of relationship. As our human dominance of the world has grown, we have become more isolated, more lonely when we can no longer call out to our neighbors…” The figures in my work play dress up, contort their bodies in anatomically impossible ways, and mirror the textures and patterns of the plants around them— all in an attempt to physically or metaphorically bridge the gap between them and their environment."

-Excerpt from exhibition statement