Lost and Found, The Hudson Current, 1994

Janise Yntema responds to the industrial environment that surrounds us in Hudson County by collecting waste material from its landscapes, even venturing into tool and dye companies to collect the by-products of their labors., and integrating them into her artwork. One can find metal dust, railroad ties, aluminum shavings, even barbed wire used as elements in her large body of work.

Her series of painted boxes featuring window sashes was selected for exhibition in the Women’s Caucus for Art National Juried Exhibition in Portland, Oregon last year. She was also one of the featured artists in the Whitney Museum’s Art Studio Tour last year as well and was asked to lecture on both occasions. It is not just the act of collecting odd bits and pieces that has earned Yntema these shows. and 41 other group exhibitions along with six solo exhibitions since 1987. With a masterful touch she paints these found objects into her work, using then to develop a sculptural aspect to her canvases.

Yntema’s show at Hoboken Gallery includes a few pieces that reflect this earlier work but consists mostly of an installation of a series of drawings that are in dramatic contrast with the fore-mentioned work. Yntema usually sculpts her canvases with paint, but this time the white takes precedence. These simple pencil drawings on white paper, not mounted, but secured only on the top, project from the wall so that they move as you pass by. The whole wall becomes and animated sculpture, and yet these are still drawings, blurring the line between these two art forms. These works, Yntema says, are in response to the heavier work of the past, and are inspired by the simple beauty of Japanese calligraphy.

“This series reflects how the eye scans and codes information into little fragments.” states Yntema. “The overall picture is developed from the tiniest of details.”

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