Strands,” a mixed media exhibit by Jean Burdick, a fine arts teacher at Town Center School, is on display at Pennington School’s Silva Gallery of Art through February 4. Burdick presents a gallery talk on Tuesday, January 26, at 4 p.m.
Burdick received her bachelor’s degree in fine arts from Pratt Institute, her master’s degree of fine arts in painting from University of the Arts, and a master’s degree in arts education from Kutztown University. A teacher for 31 years, she has taught art from elementary to college level. In the West Windsor-Plainsboro district for 21 years, she was at Hawk and Village schools, and has been at Town Center School since it opened. She has also taught art at Mercer County Community College, Hamilton Township School District, and was a department chair at St. Michael’s High School in New York City for 10 years.
“My work addresses the flux of the natural world, its fragility, its transience, and the paralleling loss we experience in marking the passage of time in our lives,” she says. “Botanical images from many sources become a vehicle to form a matrix of individual strands. When the strands become entangled and obstruct one another the effect is similar to our own memories of personal relationships fading-in and out of clarity.”
Relying upon her extensive experience as a painter and printmaker, Burdick creates layers of superimposed textures and images, incorporating both processes to build upon her observations of the interconnected and interdependent systems of nature. She received a Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation fellowship grant to study in Tuscany in the summer of 2006. “I enjoy images from the natural world, whether microscopic or patterns, juxtaposed with abstract drawn images,” she says.
“By offering layers of information without immediate purpose or specific meaning my work allows for multiple interpretations in relating the duality of what lies beneath with what is observed on the surface,” says Burdick. “My work is ultimately about the accumulation of experience that forms the collective memory.”
Burdick has shown her work in solo exhibitions at Janssen Pharmaceutical; Lawrenceville School; and City Museum of Trenton at Ellarslie. She has exhibited in numerous regional and national shows including The New Jersey State Museum; William Patterson University; Monmouth University College of New Jersey; and Hunterdon Museum of Art. Her work is represented in the collections of Johnson and Johnson Corporation, Mercer County Cultural and Historical Society, and private collections. She was also one of 70 contemporary women artists from the tri-state area in the second “Dangerous Woman” show at Mercer College. Burdick is a member of the Third Street Gallery in Philadelphia.
Born in Fort Dix, she was raised in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. She lives with her husband in Yardley, Pennsylvania. They have two adult daughters and one grandson.
“I’m an advocate for museum education and I regularly plan field trips for students to the Princeton University Art museum,” she says. “I believe in the importance of exposure at a young age for a lifetime appreciation of the arts and I always coordinate pre and post visit activities to enhance the experience.”
Art Exhibit, Silva Gallery of Art, Pennington School, 112 West Delaware Avenue, Pennington. Tuesday, January 26, 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. Gallery talk in conjunction with “Strands,” an exhibit of mixed media work of Jean Burdick, who teaches art in the West Windsor-Plainsboro School district. 609-737-8069. www.pennington.org.
