PUTNEY, Vt. – NXT Gallery is pleased to announce an opening reception for its forthcoming exhibit “A World Adjacent: Paintings by Jana Zeller.” The reception will take place on Friday, May 31, from 5:30-8 p.m. The exhibit continues through Aug. 11.
According to Zeller’s artist statement, “I grew up in a family of internationally touring puppeteers, and started working for our theater in my teens, painting props and puppets and designing sets. I saw many puppet shows. During this time I discovered my passion for painting, and spent many years creating backdrop-size oil paintings full of puppet-like characters and theatrical settings. I worked as a set painter for the theater, the movies, the opera, and TV. Then I began developing and touring my own puppet shows, exploring my puppet work, often from a visual perspective. I have been performing and teaching puppetry for two decades for thousands of children and adults, working across the U.S. as well as in Canada, Mexico, Germany, and India.
“During the pandemic, I circled back to my painting work and, although my brush stroke was rusty, my passion for painting was unchanged, and I had a refreshing new access to the content of my work. Cut off from the theater, I painted abandoned theater spaces and the spirits that haunt them. I recognize the similarities in my painting and my puppetry practice; my love of working with metaphor, of staging and lighting an idea, of constructing absurd situations. In a world full of problems, I reach for humor and mystery to lift our spirits and to suggest that extraordinary things can happen. I invite my audience to explore my propositions with their own imagination.”
Jana’s career as a working artist spans 30 years, three cities, and five countries. As a painter, she has worked for the opera, theater, television, and the movies, and has created a large body of oil paintings inspired by theater and magical realism. As a puppeteer, she has created and performed multiple shows that have delighted audiences nationally and internationally in theaters, libraries, schools, museums, and street fairs. She teaches workshops in puppetry, and art classes for children in her own studio in Brattleboro, Vt. She is blessed with a wonderful family, and a feisty little parrot named Mango.
The exhibition will continue through Aug. 11. The Next Stage Gallery, located at 15 Kimball Hill in Putney, is open during events, and by appointment with the artist, or by contacting Next Stage at info@nextstagearts.org or 802-451-0053.