Photo courtesy of Henry Chan.
Since graduating from OCAD U in 2016 with a major in Drawing and Painting and a minor in Illustration, Jenny Chen has had exhibitions at the Small Arms Inspections Building, the Toronto Media Arts Centre and the Living Arts Centre, and has received grants from the Ontario Arts Council.
Now, the OCAD U alum is exhibiting her work Multitude of Fish – Ascension Tales (2021) at the Workman Arts Rendezvous with Madness Festival, the first and largest arts and mental health festival and public discussion forum that has returned to Toronto from October 27 to November 6.
An entrepreneur, Chen also founded Miss Jenny’s Studio in 2020, where she leads a team of six teachers to offer art programs for children online.
OCAD U interviewed Chen about her current exhibit, which is also her first animation with Workman Arts, and how her experience with mental health has influenced her work as a visual artist who utilizes mainly watercolour, pen and clay.
Here’s how this OCAD U alum is making an impact.
How would you describe your art?
I use reoccurring symbols to make mystical environments and to tell different narratives, and I take inspiration from mythology from different cultures. When someone looks at my work, it looks like a fairy tale.
I’m more of a painter and I like working with watercolour. I also love to draw and for my piece Multitude of Fish – Ascension Tales, I made an animation where I hand drew each frame. Sometimes, I have a sense of the image I want portrayed and then I let it guide me and each consecutive step is a response to the previous one. For this piece, I ended up using an app on my iPad so I could still draw. The process was quite labour intensive; it took about three to four months.
Photo courtesy of Jenny Chen.
The Rendezvous with Madness Festival is about art and mental health. What has your experience been like with art and mental health?
I use a lot of repetition and pattern making in all my work across different mediums. This can be an expression of anxiety—I can put that energy somewhere productive. The repetitive nature of my work is very meditative and soothing so that is definitely a therapeutic process and creating work that other people can connect with is really meaningful and fulfilling for me.
I’m Chinese Canadian, and I moved to Canada with my parents with I was eight years old. I have been making art since I was five or six. I think that talking about mental health in the Chinese community—or in the Asian community as a whole—is little to non-existent, so that is something I wanted to explore. Perhaps the conversation has become more amplified in the past five or so years, but I’ve found that resources in Toronto, or mental health support for people of Asian culture is very niche and stigmatized in the Asian community, so that is one of the things I wanted to work through.
What drew you to exhibit your work in the festival?
I’ve been a Workman Arts member for a while, and they’ve been great. They focus on supporting artists with mental health struggles. The first time I was in the show was two years ago and I really wanted to partake in the discussion about mental health and explore what it means to me, using their platform to amplify my voice and find it at the same time.
This year’s theme is #MoreThanRebellion, and to me that means destigmatizing the conversation around mental health. With art, I think it’s about putting more emphasis on the issue and opening it up for discussion.
Multitude of Fish – Ascension Tales (2021) by Jenny Chen, animation.
Can you tell us about your work Multitude of Fish – Ascension Tales (2021)?
Multitude of Fish – Ascension Tales is my animation that is being exhibited at the Workman Arts Rendezvous with Madness Festival until November 6. It is about the journey of the spirit being uplifted, using the symbolism of a fish ascending to the heavens and the image of water and fish to symbolize the flow of energy, inspired by my mental wellness journey and healing. Multitude of Fish is a larger body of work with eight pieces that uses drawing, painting, clay sculptures, installation and animation.
I feel like everyone is on some sort of journey, and I’m hoping it’s an upward journey, and maybe this piece will speak to them and guide them in this way. To anyone viewing this piece, I would say find the light and follow the light.
For Ascension of Fish I used an iPad, a stylus, an app called Callipeg for drawing and animation and Adobe Premiere to create this work.
What role has OCAD U played in your work as an artist?
In my time at OCAD U, I really got to experiment with different mediums. OCAD U is where I found watercolour, and that’s what I’ve been working with a lot. The support from other people, meeting other artists, receiving critiques and being able to speak about your work and articulate your ideas, reflect on them and get feedback, was important to me.
I was drawn to the fact that OCAD U felt like a community where you can have support from your peers and be immersed in an environment where other people are creative as well, which is something I miss about the campus.
Can you tell us about your business, Miss Jenny’s Studio?
Miss Jenny’s Studio is a virtual kids’ school where I work with six teachers—some of whom are also OCAD U grads—to implement art programming for an average of up to 700 learners per month for the past few months. I really love teaching! Lately, I’ve been working more on programming and the admin side of things to expand the business, and it’s very cool that I have created jobs for other artists.
What’s next for you?
I’m still exploring the fish, and right now I’m working on a big watercolour painting with repetition in that form. I think the piece will continue to grow over the years so I’m very excited about that. Keep an eye on my website for more exhibitions and work from me!
I want to say to other artists on their mental wellness journeys: keep creating! For me, that has been an outlet and my work has gotten lighter over the years, so having some source of expression is important. You don’t necessarily have to show your work, you can do it for yourself and that’s cool, too.