If we can come back to experiencing our realities more intensely, more critically, then can we manifest a more intentional now? ~Jennifer Peart
Jennifer Peart is manifesting not only a life for herself as an artist, but also, through her art, sustainable ideas about how humans might exist with the world and with each other. I find her work, her dedication to her work, her dedication and study of how to create a better future, her love for humanity and Earth's wild places — is there a word beyond inspiring? I feel impelled to make art with purpose. Maybe you will, too.
Patricia Caspers: In your artist statement you mention that you look specifically to ... works of science (visionary) fiction" to feed your optimism for the future of life on Earth. I'm interested to hear what you're reading and how you find it visionary.
Jennifer Peart: I am currently working my way through Ursula K. LeGuin’s writing. I finished reading her novels and now I have moved on to her short stories and essays. She was a prolific author of science fiction/visionary fiction and one of the first women to win awards in the sci-fi genre. The societies and voyages she describes in her work are some of my main influences. Le Guin believed it was up to authors to spark the imagination of the masses in order to help our society envision alternatives to how we are currently living. And she did just that. Her work continues to do just that, as she is no longer in this realm.
In an obscure essay within her nonfiction collection, Dancing at the Edge of the World: Thoughts on Words, Women, and Places, Le Guin describes a political theory based on her research on the concept of utopianism. Her theory of a Non-Euclidean Utopianism asks her readers if voyages to both “lost histories of the past” and “future nowheres” (possible futures for societies adjacent to ours) can lead us back to a more present reality and nurture a higher quality of mind. If we can come back to experiencing our realities more intensely, more critically, then can we manifest a more intentional now?
Le Guin’s parents were cultural anthropologists, handed the difficult task of “studying” and sharing the life of the Native American man, the last of his Yahi tribe, whom the world came to know as “Ishi.” I believe Le Guin’s upbringing in California, learning of the Golden State’s not-so-lustrous past, surrounded by Berkeley academia, and the tragedy of Ishi made her the visionary writer I know, love, and reach for as a source of inspiration. She was a devout believer in imagination as a lifestyle and practice. I hope to carry on her faith in what is possible if more and more of us dare to dream/write/create and repeat.
PC: Wow, I didn’t know about LeGuin’s parents. I definitely see that intensity come through in your artwork. Tell me about the architecture that inspires you.
JP: I do not like to live in a world of regrets, but I sometimes wish I had majored in architectural design. I think architects, artists, poets, chefs, and all creatives live lives about connecting with others. I have always thought of architecture as an interactive art. It definitely has a wide audience (wider than the art world and world of fine dining), even if on a subconscious level. I know architects affect how we feel without us even being aware of it. Yes — art, design, literature, and food do that too, but most of us spend the majority of our days inside structures or among structures. I love that power that the architect has. I love that a design team can impact generations of thought in such an intimate way. Architects of the 19th century thought they were going to save the world with modern architecture. Students of architecture continue to learn the impacts of their designs on the future of our planet. I am attracted to structures that look to the past while also looking to the left and right, in planning ahead for future generations. Homes built into the earth, with the earth, like the Earthships of New Mexico. Architects looking to indigenous ingenuity to inspire climate crisis solutions for their home towns like Francis Kéré. Mid century modern homes of southern California suburbs that continue to inspire science fiction design and star ship architecture. Young landscape architecture students on TikTok designing greenways and migration bridges for wildlife. All of it inspires my creative practice, more so than the painters that came before me. In some ways, it is freeing that I never went to architecture school. All the math, engineering, probability, and physics would have held me back from creating the impossible, fantastical structures I do. I am unlimited by Earth’s gravity and the institution of the architecture world in what I paint and envision for our future.
PC: You know, I’ve never thought of architecture as being inspirational, but I can really see how it inspires you. I’ll have to give buildings more of my attention. Maybe it will generate new writing, too! I can also see in your work how much you appreciate a landscape that doesn’t include human-made architecture. I wonder if you would choose one of your favorites of the pieces you shared with WTR and tell our readers its backstory.
JP: Sure! Stellar Acres is inspired by the Nick Guidice paintings NASA commissioned in the 1970s. Some of Guidice's paintings included O'Neill Cylinders — giant space cylinders with a diameter of 5 miles. The cylinders were first proposed by Gerad O'Neill, a Princeton physicist. In O'Neill's original designs, each space tube could sustain 20 million people in an urban setting. The tubes were O'Niell's vision of utopia. Stellar Acres is my own exploration into the design of cylindrical space tubes — my own utopia. My cylinder vision differs because the space tubes preserve water and plant life, not people. An ecosystem preserved in a space tube — a natural system sustained by an artificial one. After all, our visions of the future represent our concerns in the present. My present is much different than that of O'Neill's, therefore, so is my visionary dreaming.
There is a farm near where I currently live that specializes in native seeds. Hedgerow Farms in Winters, California cultivates California native seeds of known-origin, wildland collected Californian native grasses as well as fobs, sedges, and rushes. Hedgerow seeds and plants are used in wildlife habitat restoration projects throughout the state. Other projects that utilize their seeds include agricultural restoration projects, erosion control, and large-scale landscaping. According to the Native Seed Needs Assessment, composed by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), the demand for seeds from diverse native plant species far outweigh the supply. Severe wildfires, floods, and droughts are just some of the crises native plant communities and natural areas are dealing with in California and across the planet.
Whenever I see dystopian movies or shows depicting a hero's journey about securing the family or saving the future of the human race, I wonder what the scientists are doing. What are the naturalists, ecologists, biologists, anthropologists, and botanists doing during the apocalyptic event? Apocalypse comes — are they still doing the good work? Are they sending tubes of native plant seeds into space? Are they continuing to archive adobo recipes? I would like to think so. Imagine a collection of tubes in space where native plant landscapes and natural ecosystems are preserved. The idea seems a little out there, but then again — what would Gerad O'Neill think of our native seed farms?
PC: I've learned so much from this interview. Thank you for sharing your art and your ideas!
Jennifer Peart: I am currently working my way through Ursula K. LeGuin’s writing. I finished reading her novels and now I have moved on to her short stories and essays. She was a prolific author of science fiction/visionary fiction and one of the first women to win awards in the sci-fi genre. The societies and voyages she describes in her work are some of my main influences. Le Guin believed it was up to authors to spark the imagination of the masses in order to help our society envision alternatives to how we are currently living. And she did just that. Her work continues to do just that, as she is no longer in this realm.
In an obscure essay within her nonfiction collection, Dancing at the Edge of the World: Thoughts on Words, Women, and Places, Le Guin describes a political theory based on her research on the concept of utopianism. Her theory of a Non-Euclidean Utopianism asks her readers if voyages to both “lost histories of the past” and “future nowheres” (possible futures for societies adjacent to ours) can lead us back to a more present reality and nurture a higher quality of mind. If we can come back to experiencing our realities more intensely, more critically, then can we manifest a more intentional now?
Le Guin’s parents were cultural anthropologists, handed the difficult task of “studying” and sharing the life of the Native American man, the last of his Yahi tribe, whom the world came to know as “Ishi.” I believe Le Guin’s upbringing in California, learning of the Golden State’s not-so-lustrous past, surrounded by Berkeley academia, and the tragedy of Ishi made her the visionary writer I know, love, and reach for as a source of inspiration. She was a devout believer in imagination as a lifestyle and practice. I hope to carry on her faith in what is possible if more and more of us dare to dream/write/create and repeat.
PC: Wow, I didn’t know about LeGuin’s parents. I definitely see that intensity come through in your artwork. Tell me about the architecture that inspires you.
JP: I do not like to live in a world of regrets, but I sometimes wish I had majored in architectural design. I think architects, artists, poets, chefs, and all creatives live lives about connecting with others. I have always thought of architecture as an interactive art. It definitely has a wide audience (wider than the art world and world of fine dining), even if on a subconscious level. I know architects affect how we feel without us even being aware of it. Yes — art, design, literature, and food do that too, but most of us spend the majority of our days inside structures or among structures. I love that power that the architect has. I love that a design team can impact generations of thought in such an intimate way. Architects of the 19th century thought they were going to save the world with modern architecture. Students of architecture continue to learn the impacts of their designs on the future of our planet. I am attracted to structures that look to the past while also looking to the left and right, in planning ahead for future generations. Homes built into the earth, with the earth, like the Earthships of New Mexico. Architects looking to indigenous ingenuity to inspire climate crisis solutions for their home towns like Francis Kéré. Mid century modern homes of southern California suburbs that continue to inspire science fiction design and star ship architecture. Young landscape architecture students on TikTok designing greenways and migration bridges for wildlife. All of it inspires my creative practice, more so than the painters that came before me. In some ways, it is freeing that I never went to architecture school. All the math, engineering, probability, and physics would have held me back from creating the impossible, fantastical structures I do. I am unlimited by Earth’s gravity and the institution of the architecture world in what I paint and envision for our future.
PC: You know, I’ve never thought of architecture as being inspirational, but I can really see how it inspires you. I’ll have to give buildings more of my attention. Maybe it will generate new writing, too! I can also see in your work how much you appreciate a landscape that doesn’t include human-made architecture. I wonder if you would choose one of your favorites of the pieces you shared with WTR and tell our readers its backstory.
JP: Sure! Stellar Acres is inspired by the Nick Guidice paintings NASA commissioned in the 1970s. Some of Guidice's paintings included O'Neill Cylinders — giant space cylinders with a diameter of 5 miles. The cylinders were first proposed by Gerad O'Neill, a Princeton physicist. In O'Neill's original designs, each space tube could sustain 20 million people in an urban setting. The tubes were O'Niell's vision of utopia. Stellar Acres is my own exploration into the design of cylindrical space tubes — my own utopia. My cylinder vision differs because the space tubes preserve water and plant life, not people. An ecosystem preserved in a space tube — a natural system sustained by an artificial one. After all, our visions of the future represent our concerns in the present. My present is much different than that of O'Neill's, therefore, so is my visionary dreaming.
There is a farm near where I currently live that specializes in native seeds. Hedgerow Farms in Winters, California cultivates California native seeds of known-origin, wildland collected Californian native grasses as well as fobs, sedges, and rushes. Hedgerow seeds and plants are used in wildlife habitat restoration projects throughout the state. Other projects that utilize their seeds include agricultural restoration projects, erosion control, and large-scale landscaping. According to the Native Seed Needs Assessment, composed by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), the demand for seeds from diverse native plant species far outweigh the supply. Severe wildfires, floods, and droughts are just some of the crises native plant communities and natural areas are dealing with in California and across the planet.
Whenever I see dystopian movies or shows depicting a hero's journey about securing the family or saving the future of the human race, I wonder what the scientists are doing. What are the naturalists, ecologists, biologists, anthropologists, and botanists doing during the apocalyptic event? Apocalypse comes — are they still doing the good work? Are they sending tubes of native plant seeds into space? Are they continuing to archive adobo recipes? I would like to think so. Imagine a collection of tubes in space where native plant landscapes and natural ecosystems are preserved. The idea seems a little out there, but then again — what would Gerad O'Neill think of our native seed farms?
PC: I've learned so much from this interview. Thank you for sharing your art and your ideas!
May / Jume 2023
Jennifer Peart is a contemporary landscape painter based in Sacramento, California. She grew up in the nearby Sierra Nevada foothills where she developed a deep relationship with landscape and place. Peart studied drawing and painting through Sacramento community colleges before transferring to Mills College, Oakland where she received her degree in Studio Art. Upon graduation, she went into Education and taught for over ten years in California public schools. On a summer hike in Yosemite, she decided to pivot away from the classroom and pursue her art full-time. Instead of teaching students to envision a better future, Peart now freely creates her own alternative realities and parallel worlds.
ARTIST STATEMENT
Depictions of futures that never came, or could never be, both haunt and inspire us. Leftover fragments of retrofutures expose human failures as well as triumphs. I look specifically to mid-century American architecture and works of science (visionary) fiction to feed my own optimism for the future of life on Earth. Through painting, I explore the faded idealism found in improbable utopian visions and our failed attempts to control Nature.
My new nowheres re-contextualize motifs found in typical renderings of ideal architectural models and Shangri-La landscapes to give that abandoned desire a new launchpad. My aim is to emphasize the correlation between architectural and psychological space by taking new liberties in my approach to the medium. Among these methods are my inversions of spatial norms and divergent use of color and texture; all of which express my faith in our innovation as a species that is slowly relearning to coexist with a living planet.
ARTIST STATEMENT
Depictions of futures that never came, or could never be, both haunt and inspire us. Leftover fragments of retrofutures expose human failures as well as triumphs. I look specifically to mid-century American architecture and works of science (visionary) fiction to feed my own optimism for the future of life on Earth. Through painting, I explore the faded idealism found in improbable utopian visions and our failed attempts to control Nature.
My new nowheres re-contextualize motifs found in typical renderings of ideal architectural models and Shangri-La landscapes to give that abandoned desire a new launchpad. My aim is to emphasize the correlation between architectural and psychological space by taking new liberties in my approach to the medium. Among these methods are my inversions of spatial norms and divergent use of color and texture; all of which express my faith in our innovation as a species that is slowly relearning to coexist with a living planet.