Jenny Anne makes short films, art videos, mixed media pieces, drawings and paintings and recently graduated from UC Berkeley with a bachelors degree in the Practice of Art. She has been in art shows at The dA, Needles & Pins, and The Worth Ryder Art Gallery. She is currently building a record collection, accumulating useless talents, and planning a surprise for everyone who is wondering what she will be doing now that she is graduated.
"in our world, where there are more and more faces, more and more alike, it is difficult for an individual to reinforce the originality of the self and to become convinced of its inimitable uniqueness. There are two methods for cultivating the uniqueness of the self: the method of addition and the method of subtraction...... The method of addition is quite charming if it involves adding to the self such things as a cat, a dog, roast pork, love of the sea or cold showers. But the matter becomes less idyllic if a person decides to add love for communism for the homeland, for Mussolini, for Catholicism or atheism, for fascism or antifascism. In both cases the method remains exactly the same: a person stubbornly defending the superiority of cats over animals is doing basically the same thing as one who maintains that Mussolini was the sole savior of Italy: he is proud of this attribute of the self and he tries to make this attribute (a cat or Mussolini) acknowledged and loved by everyone.
Here is the strange paradox to which all people cultivating the self by way of the addition method are subject: they use addition in order to create a unique, inimitable self, yet because they automatically become propogandists for the added attributes, they are actually doing everything in their power to make as many others as possible similar to themselves; as a result, their uniqueness ( so painfully gained) quickly begins to disappear....."
"I can never read all the book I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in life. And I am horribly limited."
Of course there were terrible angels that I found, old friends to be seen through the choking on the heat, cigarettes to be had in the car, drinks to be drunk in bathrooms drink up baby doll drink up, songs to be sung in the bathroom with two guitars and everyone crowding in because happy days are here again, over and over and endlessly endlessness leaving me anxious and wanting something but not knowing what
traveling for the rest of the month in which i will be photographing the adventures I go on, drawing everything I imagine, searching for terrible angels, having trouble sleeping, and being bohemian like you.
"...though at times she gave an expression of repose that was at once static and evocative. This was because she knew few words and believed in none, and in the world she was rather silent, contributing just her share of urban humor with a precision that approached meagerness. But at the moment when strangers tended to grow uncomfortable in the presence of this economy she would seize the topic and rush off with it , feverishly surprised with herself--then bring it back and relinquish it abruptly, almost timidly, like an obedient retriever, having been adequate and something more"
