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The Place We Call Home
Written By: Donna Rhodes | Issue: July 2024 | Photograph By: Susan Renfro
The sweet, holy truths about home and sanctuary are explored in Penny Pollock’s new exhibit, launched with a special showing at Jeanie Edwards Fine Art Gallery, July 18, 5:30 to 7:30 P.M. For more information, email Penny at [email protected], or chat with Jeanie at her gallery – 223 South 4th Street in Highlands.
Jeanie Edwards and Penny Pollock
Any day is a great day if Penny Pollock is the headliner.
When you need a cup full of thought-provoking delight she is the one to brew it up.
Here’s what she is steeping now: Home. Home is refuge, a roof over your head, safety, shelter, protection.
She’s translating metaphors associated with home, particularly nesting (soft feathers and fur) into tender icons, in soft shapes and delicate colors, each encaustic painting tells its heart-warming story.
She encourages thought about what sanctuary means to us. In religion, sanctuary is a sacred place, set apart from the profane, ordinary world. All living things, people, animals, even plants, have sanctuaries, familiar places, roosting boughs, comfy caves, secretive eaves, a special chaise, a flower bed under a warm sky, a cluster of moss and rocks on a sloping hillside.
“People say they don’t feel safe outside their homes these days,” Penny says. And many doubt their homes are even safe. Penny continues, “We, as women, always try to do so much with other women and animals. That prevails in my latest collection, The Place We Call Home.”
“Refuge provides shelter and protection,” Penny continues. “Nesting is different. It is arranging and creating a place where people feel comfortable and safe.
“The nesting is more creative – your expression of your environment. I collect nests that birds leave. I see they’ve woven my dog’s hair, random fibers, twigs, and local moss into gorgeous works of art. Humans can’t create what nature does.
“Nests are metaphors of homes, how things feel to us. Our dog’s hair makes a safe nest for fledglings. Birds borrow from nature. Feathered friends, dogs, and people live together, using each other’s materials (hair, threads, feathers, down). In the end, Nature always makes a full circle … and a nest.”
The Place We Call Home is Penny’s first in a series. Two more series are in the queue. Penny uses her art to help define and understand the world …its loss, grief, and ultimately, forgiveness. Her images are simple, yet penetrating. They are universal, relatable to all. They deepen with every viewing. And, as she says, “Cherish what we can as long as we can and as long as we are here.”
See her special showing at Jeanie Edwards Fine Art Gallery, July 18, 5:30 to 7:30 P.M. Enjoy her The Place We Call Home exhibition, accompanied by tasty hors d’ oeuvres and Penny’s uplifting images. [email protected], (805) 798-1418.
