Inland Art | Rapport to explore - The Community Word

This painting by Monmouth College professor Janis Mars Wunderlich is part of her Emergence series, which was on display at Monmouth earlier this year. Wunderlich’s vividly colorful paintings, embellished to the edges with flora and fauna, challenge the observer to see and feel their way through a story that tells them about themselves. (SUBMITTED PHOTO)

LISA NELSON RAABE

If you have seen Janis Mars Wunderlich’s work, it is not simple to feel neutral about or easily forgotten. Table-top-sized, ceramic sculptures are full of allegorical, symbolic and personal story telling. Vividly colorful paintings, embellished to the edges with flora and fauna, challenge us to see and feel our way through a story that tells us about ourselves.

What are the stories here? As a child, Wunderlich was enthralled by the tales her Cherokee grandfather Edwin George told her and the artwork he created layered with wall to wall imagery of creatures, symbols and color.

Wunderlich also creates layered work. Beginning with an idea for a story to explore, she constructs a clay figure by hand with its additional appendages. Detailing the surface with scratching, gouging, and incising, a visceral texture holds yet allows the flow of color and form to occur spontaneously from shiny colored glazes.

A round head with large eyes dripping with colored light whose face disguises an easy read who precariously balances books atop its green-haired head. A boat with carefree creatures surfs astride the top of an unassuming cat-like bust.

Figures float and fly, caressing animals like the pointy eared blue cat, pink piggy with glasses or friendly green dog. Creatures clutching and caught on arms and legs weigh down and yet seem light in the midst of nurturing support from a docile central figure.

Wunderlich, the second of 10 children, has five children of her own. The female as a life-giving entity and the heart of a nurturing mother is fundamental to her vision. In one painting, the watery sea nature of a thousand eyes tells a tale of the body birthing innumerable beings.

Enwrapped and intertwined, they reside within a female-focused creation story. She offers a feminist view weighted toward assisting and encouraging even in relation to the prickliness of personality or against needing to let go.

Reaching the finish of a piece is much less about producing something quickly. It is an investment in process and about finding what the work is saying. Intuitive and spontaneous decisions contradict easy completion and hold both the pleasure and pain of human interaction. Revealing and concealing during the making gives insight into content. Wunderlich explores how we attempt to explain and codify the complexities of human relationships within our institutions while the sacrifices offered are innately personal. Each piece is a window into her own stories and in the wider view a picture of what each of us is experiencing.

Arriving at Monmouth College in 2017 to teach art history and ceramics, Janis Mars Wunderlich is a strong contributing member of the central Illinois arts community. Her visions of lightness and joy — the mixed reality of parental tough love and unchallenged support — abound within the buoyancy of human relationships and inhabit each ceramic and painted work. Constancy and attention is in every detail of her artwork, research and teaching. Her layering of emotion and event fearlessly describes humanity. Look for her. She is an artist not easily dismissed.

Find out more www.janismarswunderlich.com.