Jenny Hope Antes (b. Bronx, NY) works primarily outdoors on large-scale, mixed media paintings. Her artistic process is informed by keen sensory awareness and her earlier career in post-colonialistic archaeology and repatriation/rematriation. Antes is a published poet, author, and has led undergraduates in studio arts, ancient history, and humanities courses, after completing a Postgraduate Diploma in Archaeology and Heritage Management. Antes draws and sculpts in clay daily and is constantly experimenting with organic, household, and manufactured objects and forms, such as copper, inks, vinegar, baking soda, soot, found objects and paint media. She experiments with physical aspects of blurriness and decisiveness to indicate ambiguity as well as more recognizable references to the outdoors. In 2025, she completed an MFA (Visual Studies) at the Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland, Oregon, and lives in Rhode Island and New York.
Backdirt
Making art is a quest as well as a way of questioning and processing the world. I combine map-like imagery, a sense of distance, and mixed perspectives to suggest tenuous relationships between the tangible and intangible. Backdirt is defined as the excavated and discarded sediments that have generally been sifted for artifacts and presumed to be of no further significance after archaeological fieldwork. Backdirt is also a metaphor for past decades and lived experiences. The artwork created in the series Backdirt is the result from fieldwork in post-colonial archaeology in three countries and subsequent sense-memories that are conjured up while painting. Blurriness and decisiveness are techniques that are explored through extensive experimentation with organic, household, and manufactured materials. Many layers of translucent to opaque colors and textures establish a record of time passing quickly. Color relationships and extensive mark-making are combined to provide references to earth, sky, and distant time. Mixed pictorial spaces are often evident and reflect my contemplative practices. These are the result of life experiences, sifted through keen sensory awareness and evident in composite though indeterminate locations.
Combining art and science with spiritual knowledge of places and weather continue as the foundation of my artwork.
