Drawing from Fifth Grade Class, Holualoa School, Holualoa, HI

Drawing from Fifth Grade Class, Kealakehe Primary School, Kailua-Kona, HI

Drawing from Third Grade Class, Kealakehe Intermediate School, Kailua-Kona, HI

February -April 2006 
The artist’s “Community Project” is based on a notion from her own practice:  even a few defined elements can provide a boundless variability of expression.  She recently decided she will take a small “sample” of her lexicon, five or six elements and present them as neutrally as possible — i.e. like the tarot cards — to a great variety of people, of all ages, living all over the world.  She’ll then encourage them to create their own narratives, personal or imaginary, from these constituent elements and realize that narrative as a drawing.  The artist sees herself as a kind of facilitator but not “the artist.”  In a sense, the project is about the artist in all of us and the endless unpredictability of the human imagination.

In April of 2006, Jane was awarded an artist in residence grant by the Laila Art Fund to bring her Community Project to the Big Island of Hawaii, under the auspices of the Holualoa Foundation for Arts and Culture.  She brought the project to four middle schools, a public special needs school, a home for the elderly, a home for abused women and a women’s prison.  She returned with over 400 drawings and ten hours of unedited videotape documenting the visits.  The success of the project for all: the grantor, the venues, all the participating individuals, their institutions and the artist herself has encouraged Jane to proceed further with this unusual process-driven, experimental collaboration.  With the proper support, the artist hopes to bring the project to locations around the world.  Prospectively, Sweden is next with China and Trinidad to follow.  The final form of the project is still open and will become manifest as the drawings and video will allow.  For these Hawaiian visits, the lexicon of images presented was fire, water, clown, rope and tree.