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• S.J. Hart’s childhood muse

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Jennifer North »
Address: 1705 W Kirby Ave Champaign, IL 61821
Phone: (217) 363-5001
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Jennifer North, 17 E. Taylor St., Champaign, not only offers various styles of women’s clothing, shoes, purses, funky jewelry and beauty products, but it also has several pieces of artwork by Urbana artist S.J. Hart.

“Songbirds,” a selection of paintings and sketches by Hart, add to the décor of Jennifer North, one of many venues that participated in this year’s Boneyard Arts Festival.

Hart’s work fuses etching, drawing and figurative painting with a gothic edge. The pieces have black and white images of little girls with physical characteristics of birds. The background has large, vibrant flowers juxtaposing the image of the child. From feathers to bird legs, the etched pieces are rich in detail that gives an air of edginess.

The “Songbirds” pieces on display are the most recent in the series. Hart says the art was inspired by Victorian post-mortem photography, a style of photography that captures photos of the deceased in a peaceful or lifelike state as a keepsake for families.

“The girls are very much alive but they’re in a strange dream place, somewhere between joy and grief,” she says.

The work was inspired by a series of dreams Hart had as a child with large birds. She says birds can be beautiful but can also be creepy. These pieces, which are stunning with the contrast of colors, are also attractive and somewhat creepy. Hanging along the wall beside the entrance as well as behind the register, Hart’s work has attracted attention from customers.

Daly Andersson, employee at Jennifer North, says store patrons have asked her about the pieces and have requested to see a sheet kept at the counter with information about the work. She says her favorite piece is “We Changed the Story, We Solved the Problem,” which has a black and white image of a child standing with a wolf in front of bright, thorny flowers and bushes.

“I think it’s a cool juxtaposition ... it looks like something coming from a fairytale,” Andersson says. “The background looks like it’s not supposed to be there.”

Hart says she has worked a lot with flat, abstract backgrounds that are not entirely connected to the figure in the foreground. She says she likes to leave the audience guessing with these pieces since the expressions on the young girls do not tell what is going on. For instance, in “Birds and Beasts with Standard Feet,” a little girl who has bird legs stands alone in front of massive flowers. It is up to interpretation in terms of what is going on as far as her state of mind in this image.

“You don’t know what they’re thinking or where they’re coming from and I think there’s something interesting about that,” Hart says.