from the KEY WEST ART & HISTORICAL SOCIETY 281 FRONT STREET, KEY WEST, FL 33040 295-6616 Fax: 295-6649
Attention: News editors, news directors, features editors and programming directors. Please use the following item as a news story, public service announcement or community event. Pix available. For immediate release Nov. 22, 2004.
The work of Key West Artist Janet Mueller is probably familiar to everyone with an interest in Florida Keys culture. Her paintings-unmistakable in their bright colors, Picassoesque overtones, and recurring themes of romance, music and food-can be found in many Keys' collections. And over the past few years, more than a few party guests have remarked about the uniqueness of her painted designs that adorn clothing as well as serving platters, saucers and other ceramic ware. Mueller's fans will not be disappointed when a major exhibition of her work opens Dec. 2 in the Bryan Gallery of the Key West Museum of Art & History at the Custom House, and they also will be fascinated by other aspects of her work-some predating her Key West years; some very current, including a couple pieces with a political edge. A native of Champaign, Illinois, who holds a marketing degree from the University of Illinois there, Mueller spent her early career as a graphic designer producing television commercials and print ads. In 1990 a collection of her clothing designs were shown at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago and she subsequently was commissioned by the Spiegel company to paint 900 women's dresses and about 500 of her original fashion illustrations were produced as numbered, signed prints. The next year Mueller altered her career course and dedicated herself to the creation of fine art, producing paintings in an original contemporary, abstract style. This culminated in an exhibit of 24 paintings depicting what she called "the cycle of life" and "the road to paradise" in a one-person show in Champaign in 1993. In 1994 that aesthetic "road" literally led her to Key West where her life on the island found expression in new vibrant and bold paintings in gouache, acrylics and oils. Freed from the meticulous and tedious details of wielding an airbrush for commercial illustrations-a technique at which she excelled-Mueller began using big, brash brush strokes on large canvases. One such painting, a recent work called Jazz Guyz, will welcome visitors to the Custom House exhibition with its improvised splash of amplified, syncopated color and a dissonantly harmonic combination of musical forms that resonate as if the canvas were a loudspeaker broadcasting a live performance. Mueller's work, like that of many other artists, is meaningful in a deeply personal way. Her explanations sometimes are helpful to those trying to fathom what the paintings are saying. For example, the text that accompanies a four-by-three-foot canvas entitled The Past Waves Before Me helps illuminate what to a casual viewer might appear as just colorful combination of curiously curved forms, but which, on closer inspection, become symbols: "The artist painted herself sitting on a bus waving goodbye to her sister who was climbing into her car," Mueller states. "The splashing water doubles as tears. "Reflecting on the life they had spent together is painful." Still, many of her paintings have trouble speaking for themselves, even without the footnotes: perhaps, in spite of them. Despite their seemingly haphazard composition, and often-childlike playfulness, the paintings are complex statements, Mueller explains. "Each line has a meaning. Nothing is thrown together at random. I sometimes spend more than a month conceiving in my head just what a painting will contain, before I ever pick up a brush. That's the difficult part." That fact was illustrated two years ago when Mueller was scheduled to show about 15 artworks at an exhibition in Rome, Italy. When her paintings were indefinitely delayed in a customs snafu, Mueller bought paints and canvas, shut herself in a small apartment and recreated each one of them, using just a set of snapshots. All in one week. In the last few months, Mueller has been experimenting with creating artworks using a computer. She plans to include some of the results in the Custom House exhibit, she says. Also she has designed an attractive 2005 Calendar called Evolution with 12 different works that provide a kind of Cliff Notes course in Mueller's characteristic, Cubistic style. The illustrations of drawings and paintings proceed from the precise, draftsman-like proportioning of a head through an almost seasonal experience that includes tastes of portraiture, color, abstraction, theatrical staging and back again to a simple form. One can almost see the calendar as the story of Mueller herself as she evolved from a young illustrator into a fine contemporary artist. The calendars are on sale at the museum shop. The exhibit opens with an artist's reception for members of the Key West Art & Historical Society and friends from 5:30 to 7 p.m. on Dec. 2 with complimentary hors d'oeuvres provide by Nicola Seafood, Hyatt Resort. The exhibition is part of the Museum's annual Artists- In Season series and runs through Jan. 14, 2005.
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| The Past Waves Before Me,oil on canvas, 48 X 36 inches,by Janet Mueller |
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| The Jazz Guyz,oil on canvas, 60 X 36 inches,by Janet Mueller |