Press release for “Rise Up! Art as Action” by San Francisco Arts Education Project:

“Artists express alarm about our nation’s new directions in the San Francisco Arts Education Project’s latest exhibition designed to interact with young viewers. Each of the participating artists has a singular voice, a point of view and a medium with which to express themselves as they respond to the state of our nation. Each artist also recognizes that being part of this exhibition for this particular organization means they are speaking directly to school-age children, ages 5-17, through their work and so have created prompts and ideas for involving the SFArtsEd student audience to respond to the work. In this way, the visitors will be invited to be part of the conversation and take action.”

“welcome || unwelcome” is a project that addresses the social, political, and emotional impact of the presidential election on our terms. So many of us are frustrated, angry, distressed, frightened and even energized to take action as a result of the current administration’s policies that are, in my opinion, often inhumane and unconstitutional.

This project is a kind of exercise in setting boundaries towards things that are unwelcome, unfair, or hurtful and also as a means to identify qualities that encourage the welcoming of peace, joy, and freedom.

Think of the doors near the  mats as the doors to our world, our country, our communities and our lives. “welcome || unwelcome” is a project that calls for your voices, your choices, and your participation as my fellow artistic collaborators because “we, (are)the (fabulous) people.”

Write and draw your thoughts about what you want to support and celebrate and that which you will not tolerate. Your responses can be anything that is important to you, from the personal to the more politically charged.

I’ve rolled out the welcome mat to my family in India, soggy doggies in the rain, women’s rights, and even an endangered chipmunk or two. I’ve also been known to slam doors shut to anything mean or scary. I’ve contributed my own responses for “welcome || unwelcome.” Now I welcome you to fill up those doors with your thoughts!

Prompts for children:

Please respond to both questions on separate cards.

1) What do you welcome into your country, your community, and your life?

2) What do you unwelcome in your country, your community, and your life?

Use the markers to write and/ or draw your responses on the cards. Get creative and experiment with various text sizes and styles. Use the scissors to cut the cards into shapes and symbols.

After you’ve finished both cards, (one for ‘welcome’ and one for ‘unwelcome,’) tape the cards on the door above the appropriate mat.

Copyright Prajakti Jayavant, 2017

Prajakti Jayavant

California | Visual

Artist In Residence Program 2016

Artist Statement
My interest involves the questioning of a work’s function as object/ drawing/ painting. I practice restraint with the fragile tactility of paper and the vast temperament of paint. The traditional drawing material of paper is no longer flat but now holds unenclosed volume. Of slight bulk and build, this work has a relationship to the wall and intrudes upon the surrounding space. I work within these parameters to create significance from the insignificant and to expand perceptual thought and emotion through subtlety.

While At Headlands
I am going to paint, cut, blend, and fold into the oscillating tension of endless, natural beauty amidst the armored grit and order of this former military site. With curiosity as culprit and painterly discipline as guide, I plan to bring down ceilings, elevate surfaces, and thwart corners by further relating my dimensional artworks to the architecture itself. My urbanite self will be newly negotiating with the temporal sunlight to build structure from outlines and to ease a different painted luminosity into the textured development of complex color.

Overall, I will continue my interest in combining the following ideas to create painted, abstract forms: simplicity/ complexity; beauty/ malady; organic/ architectural; fragility/ strength; interior/ exterior narratives and settings; and the ephemeral qualities of materials.

Copyright Prajakti Jayavant 2016

Known for highly dimensional, often deeply colored work, with this new show Prajakti Jayavant takes a leap. Pushing herself to achieve form from paint, and feeling from mark, these pieces lie tighter to the plane of wall, ceiling or floor- defining their territory with quiet force.

Looked at from afar, Jayavant’s art appears solid, grounded, known. On closer inspection subtle gradations in color, treatment, and line add liquidity to the sculptural forms. Layered with pigment reflecting back emotion, more than light, these dark empathic pieces coax minimalism towards sensuality.

Jayavant counts among her influences Martin, Ryman, Fontana, Tuttle, Twombly and Hesse. Reviewing an earlier solo show, Kenneth Baker wrote, “Jayavant can marshal…a range of references: to Richard Tuttle’s early canvas pieces, to the scrap metal vocabulary of the late John Chamberlain, the punning Africa-map/ elephant-ear forms of David Ireland, perhaps even to certain early folded sculptures of David Rabinowitch.”

It is by placing herself squarely in this lineage that she is able to limn the lines between the cerebral, the process oriented, formalism, and craft to carve out a trajectory all her own.

Sometimes taking years to complete, each piece documents a long and deepening understanding of the narrow parameters in which she chooses to explore. Indefatigable, Jayavant keeps going until history, thought, and emotion work together to push the piece into the world. Existing on its own- both apart from, and within, all it contains.

Copyright Tracy Wheeler 2015