In conjunction with the Arts District of New Orleans White Linen Night, two new exhibitions are coming to the Jonathan Ferrara Gallery on Julia Street. These solo exhibitions by Jenny Day and Trenity Thomas will be available for viewing through August 28, 2021. Jonathan Ferrara Gallery will host an opening night reception on August 7, which is White Linen Night.
Not Mirrors, Portals is an exhibition created by Jenny Day, a Santa Fe-based artist, using acrylic and spray paint, colored pencil, paint pens, and Flashe. This exhibition is a series of apocalyptic landscapes with fantastical and disturbing elements, featuring images like animals emerging from and wrapped in flowers, mushrooms, and rainbows, according to the Jonathan Ferrara Gallery's press release.
"In this work, memory is permeated with nostalgia to the point of corruption. A landscape singed and burning, animals fleeing, soaring and independent, their entities are barely tethered to the underlying structures," Day said of the exhibition.
Day calls this other world she creates not a mirror, but a portal, in which terrible things are overcome and these things ultimately become something hopeful.
In the Centre Gallery is Trenity Thomas's Alternatively Free. A New Orleans-based artist and the grand prize award recipient of the 2020 NO DEAD ARTISTS exhibition, this is Thomas's premiere solo exhibition. Thomas has created a series of photographs that combine elements of horror and film noir to creative evocative, vivid, yet still grounded works that showcase the culture of New Orleans, according to the gallery's press release. The subjects of his works are not merely people, but warm personalities popping off of canvas.
"In this series of work, I am taking a step out of reality to create visual stories through photography. Consistently pulling ideas from my imagination and things that are in front of me allows me to create my own world," Thomas said of his exhibition.
Masks are required inside the Jonathan Ferrara Gallery, regardless of vaccination status.