PUBLIC WORKS PRESS
Jane Kent, Hush, 11 x 14" (2017)
Mezzotint
New York artist Jane Kent typically bases her images on mezzotint grounds that she prepares herself; the silhouettes of unfolded cardboard packaging are equally central to her working method. Using unlikely everyday objects as a starting point she goes on to build compositions of layered and juxtaposed shapes and colors. Hush was unveiled in anticipation of Kent's contribution to the 2018 release of It Occurs To Me That I Am America. Both pieces employ the visual language of text redaction to reference themes of censorship and political discourse.
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Kent was born in New York and received her BFA from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. Her work is in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art; the Brooklyn Museum; the Rare Books Division and the Drawing and Prints Division, the Library of Congress; the Spencer Collection, the New York Public Library; the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale University Library; the Graphic Arts Collection, Princeton University Library; and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Fellowships and awards include the National Endowment for the Arts Artists’ Fellowship; the Barbara and Thomas Putnam Fellowship, MacDowell Colony; and Yaddo Artists’ Fellowship. She is Professor and Department Chair in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Vermont.