2015 – 2020 – Janet Geib Pretti

2015 – 2020

I have never made a living with my art. I have raised a family and worked for Southwestern Oregon Community College in various roles, while continuing to make and show my sculpture as time, a place to work, and money allowed. In 2015, I began to transition to a planned retirement in 2017. I reclaimed my basement workroom. I had not started a new sculpture in seven years.

I have been making sculpture, with stops and restarts, for over fifty years. Transforming ideas into form is just as intriguing and challenging as it was when I made my first piece.

What Have We Done Painted bronze and wood, 2020, 12” x 10” x 21”. I began this piece during the primary season for the 2016 presidential election. She was intended for another piece, but when she came home from the foundry, it was clear she had another purpose. In time, I realized her unease reflected my growing concerns as the campaign rhetoric heated up and it became clear who the Republican nominee would be. In 2007, we spent an entire day at the John P. Getty Museum; exploring every nook and cranny open to the public; eating lunch on a garden patio. We saw inspiring art, the garden and views were stunning, but it was a small show tucked away in the basement that has stayed with me all these years. The show was on German propaganda before and during World War II. It included stills from Leni Riefenstahl films and reproductions of posters and political cartoons. I was mesmerized and confused by the rapturous faces of the crowds, and the ugliness of the rhetoric and images. I just could not conceive why or how an entire nation could be ensnared. I still don’t understand. But I no longer doubt the power misinformation and the exploitation of racism and long entrenched inequities in education, poverty and health care have when used relentlessly, with intent, to divide our country and gain power.

Finding My Voice Painted bronze and wood, 2020, 11” x 11” x 12”. From my earliest memory, I have had a problem with words. Words are elusive, they dam up in my throat, to wither and die unspoken, in the middle of casual conversations, family celebrations, meetings and classes. Facts and figures slip by my inner censor, but words from the heart, about beliefs and passions are swallowed whole. I learned to choose my words carefully, to avoid words of substance or to reduce them into crisp, blunt statements that could be voiced quickly, before the silence took hold. Sculpture became my thinking place, the way I communicated ideas I could not voice. In grad school I was required to write a proposal and a final report for my terminal project. Writing the words was agonizing, but it was also an amazing time of clarity and productivity. After graduation, I continued to scribble notes when I sculpted. But I did not make the connection that being forced to confront words, to craft them into complete sentences and coherent thoughts had been the catalyst for my grad work. When I returned to sculpture after our youngest son left for college, I needed a starting point. I wrote piece statements for old pieces to remember where I had left off before setting art aside to sculpt sons and communities. Computers had replaced typewriters. My log jam of words could be easily reordered, culled and revised, like wax is when I sculpt. The words kept coming and coming, and with them new pieces. It is through writing and sculpting, sculpting and writing, that I dissect my life down to its core, where my voice, my sculptures wait to see the light of day.

Joy Painted bronze and wood, 2020 (revised 2023), 12" x 12 x 27". In Randy Pausch's The Last Lecture, he describes a friend’s confusion after seeing Randy in his convertible, hand tapping to the music late in his journey with terminal cancer. Late in my working career, I had the opportunity to shepherd into being a 25,000 sq. ft. branch campus. We had been serving our remote county out of a 5,000 sq. ft. converted house and borrowed spaces in schools and community buildings. It is truly a remarkable building built in an economically challenging time after a seventeen-year effort to find the land, the money and the will to build it. One day, just as I drove by a family parked at an overlook, a child leaped into the air, shouting and pointing. I knew, without a doubt, that she had just seen a whale spout for the first time. The day before the campus project had had a major setback. It was her image of pure joy, discovery, and wonder that inspired me to forge ahead through all the construction issues and unexpected conflicts and chaos that its transformative change brought after opening. For the next five years, I felt a rush of joy every time I rounded the corner into the parking lot and saw it ahead. As I prepared for retirement, I wanted a reminder of that improbable journey. But too often I saw confusion when viewers read the title of the finished piece. Some were adamant that it was not joy, that it was instead agony or grief. Only then did I realize that it did have similarities to Grief, a piece I made decades ago. Seemingly insurmountable challenges, pain and grief come into our lives unbidden, without warning, but joy can be equally unexpected. Opposites on life’s continuum, but connected, can one fully be experienced without the other?

The Future Painted bronze and wood, 2020, 12” x 10” x 22”. On August 20, 2018, Greta Thunberg decided not to attend school until the Swedish general election on September 9th. Sweden was experiencing its hottest summer in 262 years. She was demanding that Sweden reduce carbon emissions in accordance with the Paris Agreement. Thunberg sat outside the Swedish Parliament every day for three weeks with a sign Skolstrejk för klimatet (school strike for the climate). After the elections, Thunberg continued to strike on Fridays. In September, 2019, Thunberg addressed the UN General Assembly and an estimated six million protesters took to the streets all over the world. Her speech began with: “This is all wrong. I shouldn't be up here. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean. Yet, you all come to us young people for hope. How dare you! You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words and yet I'm one of the lucky ones. People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction and all you can talk about is money and fairytales of eternal economic growth. How dare you! For more than 30 years, the science has been crystal clear. How dare you continue to look away and come here saying that you're doing enough when the politics and solutions needed are still nowhere in sight.” I feel the shame of her rebuke. My generation has failed to grasp and address climate change. I fear for my grandchildren. I fear for our world.

I am Woman Painted bronze and wood, 2020, 10" x 9" x 25". I watched live coverage of Christine Blasey-Ford’s testimony. Blasey-Ford had nothing to gain and everything to lose, but stood her ground and testified. Kavanaugh testified with righteous anger, framing himself as the victim. I found myself thinking back to a time when I spoke my truth. In eighth grade, I ran for student body president on a campaign that girls were just as qualified as boys. It was 1965, I had no chance of winning. Stepping off the stage after all the speeches, I was confronted by a preacher’s son. He berated me with foul words and cocked his fist to punch me out, before someone pulled him back into the student crowd leaving the gym. No one spoke of it. I had snippets of memories: a teacher commenting that if I was determined to say that, I had better say it with humor; a sense of elation seeing students nodding approval and laughing; and a screaming face filled with hatred. But I have no memory of ever giving a speech that tied those memory bits together. My best friend supplied the missing link when she regaled a small group of friends with the story and how she got even, after our 30th high school reunion. I do not doubt that men have differing memories or no memories of events seared into the memories of women. But it has always galled me that they refuse to acknowledge that any memories other than theirs have validity. I do not doubt that women’s memories of trauma are spotty, causing them to doubt themselves and giving others an excuse to dismiss them. But I applaud women who have the courage to speak their truths. It is time we, men and women, learn to listen, to value their ideas, to acknowledge their contributions, and to treat them as equals.

Puberty Painted bronze, wood and found objects, 2017, 10” x 14” x 18”. In 1999, a coalition of schools and public agencies pooled money to bring a national expert on media literacy to the county. He gave presentations in all three school districts and an evening presentation for parents and the community. His focus was on deceptive tobacco and alcohol media campaigns, but after visiting a local middle school, he added body image. At each presentation, he was blunt, slowing down current media campaigns to a frame-by-frame pace. When he began talking about how the media portrayed the ideal woman and the rise in eating disorders in younger and younger girls, a junior high girl, dressed to look years older, challenged him, saying "they aren't making me dress this way, this is just the way I like to dress." He did not back down and I inwardly steeled for an angry phone call from her mother. Later, he also confronted high school boys. He warned them how unlikely it was that they would be coming home to the women portrayed in the ads. He advised them to stop chasing the fantasy of the ideal woman and instead learn to appreciate and value the real women in their lives. One high school gave him a standing ovation. Ever since, in airports and large crowds, I search for the ideal woman. Rarely do I see one, instead, I see countless want-to-be's, overly thin or plump, girls and women of all ages dressed in the latest skin-tight fashions. I find myself wondering how young girls today survive the media barrage that begins in infancy. How do they find space to discover themselves, to learn to value who they are and who they can become?

Cages Painted bronze, copper, fabric and wood, 2020, 26” x 17” x 9”. The images of families separated at the border and children huddled against chain-link fences triggered long-ago memories. I began waking up at night, my fingers reaching to curl around the bars of our headboard. My ’detention’ wasn't a political ploy, mine was simply two eye surgeries with week-long stays at the state’s premier children's hospital. It treated the region’s polio children. Polio protocols were strictly enforced. Children were not allowed to touch or share toys. Physical contact with staff was limited to needed care. The one hour visiting hours were strictly enforced, even for parents. If visitors were early enough to secure one of the limited wheel chairs, patients were allowed out of their crib/cages and off the ward. I remember my mom’s crushed face the day she arrived late, when I turned my back on her, curling my fingers around the bars, to wait for the next day. I still can feel the bitter January wind stinging my face, and my pure joy the day I left. I was forever changed. I never spoke of the ensuing ether nightmares and PTSD take-overs. My four-year-old self had no words for them or understanding that they were not normal. Eventually, I accepted that I was wired differently than my peers and moved on as best I could. I was not held or comforted when I needed it most, because of the real threat of polio. Today's children are separated from their parents and traumatized as a matter of public policy. They will be forever changed. They too will inexplicably reach for reassurance and comfort from bars long gone.

Coloring Inside the Lines Painted bronze and wood, 2018, 16” x 20” x 12”. I was born with a congenital cataract in my right eye. It was discovered when I was three and my odyssey through the 1950's medical world began. Those were the days of ether and polio. Toys were never shared in doctors' offices or hospital wards. My mother was always prepared with a coloring book and a box of crayons. I would tuck myself into a corner and color; lost in the decision making of what page to color first and what color should be where; obsessively careful to always stay within the lines. I colored, as I waited for my parents and the doctors to make their decisions; as I waited for the orderlies to take me to surgery. I colored through the years of alternating weeks of patching. During the weeks without patching, when I could see, I was intent on soaking in as much seeing as I could so that I could make it through the other weeks, when my good eye was patched to force my blind eye to see. Those were the weeks when my world became a colorless blur and coloring wasn't possible. I learned to sense the world through my skin. I depended on others to read my assignments and my sister to get me on the right bus after school. My mother remembers being chastised by the artsy folk for destroying my creativity, because I was so intent on staying within the lines. But she intuitively knew that it was the one place in my life over which I had control, where I made the decisions, where I could see, feel, rage, and remove myself from world of doctors, patches and mismatched glasses.

The Blame Game Painted bronze and wood, 2020, 12” x 12” x 24”. The insidious human tendency to want to find someone, something to blame rather than focusing on fixing problems seems to pervade our lives at all levels. I thought I had said all I had to say in Unkind Acts and Paybacks and Baggage, but subtle insinuations, ugly name calling, and outrageous accusations have become so pervasive that we have gotten numb to them in our conversations, media, and internet. Cynicism has replaced optimism. In the 1995 movie, The American President, the fictional president laments that his opponent’s problem “isn't that he doesn't get it. Bob's problem is that he can't sell it! We have serious problems to solve, and we need serious people to solve them. And whatever your particular problem is, I promise you, Bob Rumson is not the least bit interested in solving it. He is interested in two things and two things only: making you afraid of it and telling you who's to blame for it. That, ladies and gentlemen, is how you win elections.” In the 24 years since the movie’s release, the blame game has become an art form in American politics, used to manipulate and control public opinion, to gain power and influence. It often starts by reinterpreting a previously tolerated (often valued) difference, as a negative, something to fear, something to purge. Then it spreads like a cancer from one person, one rally, one tweet, one talking head to another, gaining momentum, dividing us into us and them.

Breathe Painted bronze and wood, 2020, 10” x 15” x 26”. Cancer is now part of my life. In the month and a half between the colonoscopy’s report and my referral appointment with a cancer specialist, I drove myself to finish labor-intensive yard projects. I carried buckets of dirt, laid patio pavers and rolled and carried rocks to restack a fallen retaining wall. I reminded myself to breathe before lifting the heavy buckets and rocks. When the rains kept me inside or physical labor wasn’t enough to ward off worries of what might be, I still reminded myself to breathe, not in preparation for lifting correctly, but in preparation for living correctly, savoring one day at a time. My specialist consultation brought good news, great news. I appear to be the poster child for why people forego dignity for a colonoscopy – to catch it early and monitor it diligently. I have been in the weeds of ‘what if’ before, but after accidents. Each time I had the bad luck of being at the wrong place, with enough good luck (or a guardian angel) to just miss the wrong time. This was different. Even though I know that the cancer that was there, is no longer there, seeing the word “cancer” on my lab report brought the first slivers of awareness that my body is mortal, that I am mortal.

Painted bronze, wood, and found Objects, 2018, 14” x 11” x 22”.
Sitting in her garden, a friend serenaded me with her favorite Mary Chapin Carpenter song in a clear but breathless voice ravaged by asthma and chronic pulmonary disease. She struggles with a host of chronic illnesses. She is tired of being ill. Her children, are weary of her always being ill and are serving up indifference, guilt, and conditions for their love. A granddaughter stopped by to confront her about the growing family rift, wanting to know what she was going to do about it. My friend replied, "I pray". She tried to answer her granddaughter's next question, "So what does that do?" as honestly and sincerely as possible. She talked of her determination to live each day with grace and gratitude, quickly changing the subject when her granddaughter scoffed, "well you can get that from yoga." I smiled at the image of my frail friend bowed by the ravages of rheumatoid arthritis, twisted into a yoga pretzel pose. The next morning, my radio alarm went off just as Mary Chapin Carpenter began reading her NPR This I Believe essay - The Learning Curve of Gratitude. I was tempted to send the transcript to the granddaughter, anonymously: "What I want more than ever is to appreciate that I have this day, and tomorrow and hopefully days beyond that. I am experiencing the learning curve of gratitude. I don't want to say "have a nice day" like a robot. I don't want to get mad at the elderly driver in front of me. I don't want to go crazy when my Internet access is messed up. I don't want to be jealous of someone else's success. You could say that this litany of sins indicates that I don't want to be human. The learning curve of gratitude, however, is showing me exactly how human I am."

Aging in Place Painted bronze and wood, 2020, 16” x 13” x 19”. We have spent seven years systematically preparing our house one project at a time for 'aging in place'. We swapped out door handles, installed grab bars, replaced under-cabinet cupboards with drawers, and enlarged doorways and bathrooms. We wanted to get big ticket items done before I retired. We wanted to be able to welcome our mothers if either became unable to live on their own. But it wasn't until we both faced a health crisis that aging-in-place became more than a theoretical concept. We have entered our fourth decade as a couple, it seemed time for another couple piece.

When Normalcy Breaks Painted bronze and wood, 2017, 19" x 19" x 22". Every day brings more news of other subtle and not so subtle changes in our world. In the summer of 2008, CNN reported that scientists at the National Snow and Ice Data Center had an informal betting pool on whether the geographic North Pole would melt out by the end of the summer. That same summer, for the first time in 28 years, my garden did not have enough warm weather to ripen a tomato on the vine while to the south Fresno farmers abandoned their tomato fields because they did not have enough water to bring the crop to market. Our small town store was without rice to sell for a week because locals bought to horde on the news of a worldwide rice shortage. Sky-rocketing fuel prices scared away the summer tourists and local schools were scrambling to figure out how to afford the fuel to run school buses and fire school boilers in the fall. Then fall came and our economic world began to crumble. I have always thought I would be able to fall back on the skills I learned as the wife of a commercial fisherman, when our lives ebbed and flowed with the seasons and the size of the catch. I grew a garden, planted fruit trees, canned and kept the freezer and pantry stocked. But now I wonder if I have planted trees that will still be able to produce in our changing climate? Will there be food to horde? Will it be affordable once it is transported to our remote town? Can I hold on long enough to keep my immediate world steady and level? Am I , are we, capable of learning and changing fast enough to adapt before it is too late?