WARDSBORO — The Wardsboro Public Library opens the new year with an exhibition of the woven decorative creations, textile objects, and prints on paper by Wardsboro artist Jenna May Konesko.
The artist's reception, on Saturday, Jan. 10 at 1 p.m., is free.
Konesko grew up in a home surrounded by vast flower and vegetable gardens not far from the waterways of the Connecticut River.
“As a child of this natural environment, she went from catching fireflies to sketching, sewing, and painting the bugs and blooms all around her. She says that her artistic father always encouraged her to ask Why? and to question how things work and how things grow,” reads the library's event announcement.
Konesko continued her study of nature and art while in college in New England and Hawaii, at arboretums in New Hampshire, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New York, and and at butterfly conservatories around the region.
She now lives in Wardsboro with her artist-techie husband, Kevin Burke, working in their studios and on their ever-expanding gardens.
She says that her creations - the wings, prints, jewelry, dolls, and handspun yarns - “are objects of wonderment, inspired by land and river, as well as stories of myth and magic.”
She recreates a variety of flora and fauna, as well as mythical beings; both the ones we recognize and those we may only glimpse “out of the corner of our eye."
Konesko works in varied and mixed media. Her portfolio includes jewelry, which she calls “totem people” or “woven wanderers.” These magical beings are made of fiber, wire, and beads. Her soft, needle-felted Gilfeather turnips, miniature vegetables, flowers, tiny sheep, and other animals are fashioned to be worn as pins.
Konesko also works on a loom, weaving shawls, wraps and blankets from alpaca, llama, and sheep fibers sourced from local farms.
She also creates works on paper printing lino-block images of Vermont's wild animals, songbirds, garden scenes, and nature throughout the four seasons. She sells these as art prints, images on fabric, and note cards.
The display is open during library hours on Monday, Thursday, and Saturday mornings until 1 p.m., and Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons until 7 p.m.