Terry Jenoure: CANARY

March 1 – 27, 2016
Opening Reception: Sunday, Mar. 6, 2 - 4 p.m.

Canary is an interdisciplinary installation of fabric art, sound, and text inspired by a scene from Jenoure’s new mystery novel.  Included are cloth figures, paper dolls, excerpts from the novel and a multi-track soundscape.  
 

TERRY JENOURE: Artist Statement
 
Canary is an interdisciplinary installation of fabric art, sound, and text inspired by a scene from my new mystery novel.  Included are cloth figures, paper dolls, excerpts from the novel and a multi-track soundscape.   Merging my love for bold, quirky, characters with energetic materials, this project is gestural and story driven, suggesting moods and mental states.
 
My early training as a violinist and vocalist, and specifically my experience as an improviser are strong influences in that I find myself referring to some basic processes that parallel ones I use to build performances.  For example, in order to forge the shape and theme, I ask myself what it is I want to express and identify those materials and techniques that are currently most exciting to me.  Mostly, I allow the chaos of indecision to forge its own order.  A lot of this work happens when I’m in a horizontal position during that magic time between sleeping and waking, somewhere around 4am.  Also similar to a performance, I’m not particularly attached to being understood.  I prefer meaning to be made somewhere between my world and yours.

Bio:
Terry Jenoure, musician, writer, and visual artist was born and raised in the Bronx, New York in a Puerto Rican and Jamaican family. A self-taught doll maker, she has worked in this medium since the mid 1980s. She is also an accomplished violinist and vocalist who began training at the age of seven. She has performed and taught in various capacities throughout the U.S., Canada, Colombia, Brazil, France, Germany, Holland, Italy, Israel, India, South Africa, and Mexico. With Master's and Doctoral degrees in Education, and a Bachelor's degree in Philosophy, she served on the graduate faculty at Lesley University, and has published a book and numerous articles on the value and nature of creative improvisation and its implications for teaching. A recipient of grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New England Foundation for the Arts, she has also been a consultant for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), the Lila Wallace Readers Digest Fund, the Ford Foundation, and the Connecticut Commission for Arts and Tourism. Terry has just completed her first novel.