Sowing & Reaping: Jennifer Hunter Jones at Abilene Center for Contemporary Arts

Almost all major world religions point to human will as the means through which good and evil proliferate. The Hindus have karma; Buddhism has its “three poisons.” In ancient Greek mythology, it was Pandora’s curiosity about a sealed vessel from the gods that led her to break it open, an action that released death and disease upon humankind. Similarly, Judeo-Christianity points to the attainment of knowledge-as-power — understanding as an end unto itself, its own idol, supplanting God — as the inducement for humanity’s initial Fall. 

Installation view of Jennifer Hunter Jones’ “It Began in the Garden” (with Adela Andea’s window installation “Midnight Zones” visible)

In It Began in the Garden, on exhibition at the Abilene Center for Contemporary Arts through January 11, Jennifer Hunter Jones explores the role of human choice and action upon posterity — for good or for ill. Consisting of primarily cold wax paintings (but also including assemblages and mixed media), Jones’ work examines the tension between good and evil and the creation-fall-redemption cycle. Many of her paintings are accompanied by the poetry of her husband, Brand Jones. The exhibition acts as an ekphrasis, yielding a dialogue between the primary Biblical text, the works of visual art, and the poetic response. Jones’ show, however, extends beyond the religious-historical-textual and into the personal, allowing the viewer to consider his or her own power of choice and the inheritance that such choices leave behind for others.

Jennifer Hunter Jones, “Illumination,” oil and cold wax

Certain of her works, to be sure, directly address the Creation story found in the book of Genesis in the Bible. For example, there are allusions to the separation of the firmaments in Jones’ Gathered Waters, and to the creation of light in Illumination. The latter painting explodes in vibrating spheres of heated oranges and muted yellows, with sgraffito marks plowing furrows into the layers of paint. The work’s effect is one of heat as much as light — it denotes dawn as strongly as it does the thermal dynamism of dawning realization. It reminds the viewer that the term “illuminare” carries a history weighted with associations of light, knowledge, clarity, and enlightenment. In this way, Illumination becomes as much a companion piece to Jones’ painting Tree of Knowledge as does her Tree of Life, its obvious counterpoint. Tree of Knowledge, like Illumination, is punctuated by yellows and golds. With Knowledge, though, Jones’ use of actual gold leaf directly connects the image to the altarpieces and illuminated manuscripts of the Middle Ages. The titular tree is wide spreading, verdant; an obscured human figure seems to regard its fruit, while ravens take refuge in its branches and shade. A distinct line runs from the human-like figure and through the ground, like a root, connecting him to the buried form of a feeding raven — scavenging carrion, an allusion to death. Alongside Tree of Knowledge, Brand Jones’ poem “The Crafty One” includes these closing lines: “‘Surely you will not die’ is the oppressor’s question for the ages./Thus battle lines are drawn and that war still rages.”

Jennifer Hunter Jones, “Tree of Knowledge,” oil, cold wax, collage, and gold leaf

Beyond a literal recounting of the Biblical Creation-and-Fall story, though, Jones uses the “garden” and its denizens — not just floral, but avian, too — as metaphors for life, propagation, and legacy. Seeds and seedpod plants recur throughout the exhibition, representing the equal human capacity to engender a heritage of good or evil. Her Imprinted series, for instance, features motifs of germination, flowering, and cyclic progression over six small panels. Seeds of a Generation, meanwhile, presents a Dali-esque landscape of bean-like pods. Their emerging spores float upward, to be eventually scattered asunder by some inevitable wind. Jones’ Seed Sower depicts a dove holding in its beak a single stalk laden with kernels. The work is a hopeful one, pointing to the facility by which such pips may be broadcast far beyond their home orchard. 

So pervasive are Jones’ seed motifs that one feels she is standing, at times, amidst the arils of a pomegranate. It was by this fruit that the Greek spring goddess Persephone was fated to spend half her year in the Underworld, resulting in winter. Seeds have a long literary history of death-and-life symbolism. 

After all, a single seed must die in order to yield a new harvest. 

It Began in the Garden is on view at the Abilene Center for Contemporary Arts through January 11.