Today we’d like to introduce you to Jennifer Kling.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Jennifer. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
My name is Jennifer Kling and I am an artist. My journey in getting to where I am today has been a convoluted one. My career actually began in healthcare, as an occupational therapist working in rehabilitation (work which I continue to this day). In 2005, my life was predictable and going largely according to plan, that is until my unborn child was diagnosed at 7 months gestation with life threatening congenital defects. Her most severe malformation was a single ventricle heart. The day she was diagnosed, my life began to change in ways that would have been impossible to foresee.
As it turned out she lived 5 and a half years, suffering complications after every surgery, and never making it home after a heart transplant. After her death, my first husband decided he did not want to be married. I did my best to continue functioning and start again, pouring energy into work and trying my best to raise money for the Children’s Heart Foundation to fund research on congenital heart disease. I thought about a career change. I considered medical school, but ultimately I chose another direction: art.
I understand now the cavernous expanse of need in the world, having felt it first hand, and I know that I truly need to find a way to do more. I plan to use my experience to push forward a community dialogue regarding acceptance and resilience through my interdisciplinary artwork. I need to be part of a seismic change in our world, and I have finally found a way. Ideas and images can be powerful instruments of change for individuals as well as systems.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
Since I was a little girl I always wanted to be a mother. I thought I would be great at it. If the definition of a good mother is having a healthy child, I have surely failed. I also failed in my first marriage. These failures have both been very difficult to accept, partly because I have always been an overachiever and partly because I considered these roles to be the most important endeavors of my life.
My firstborn, Ava, was adorable, but sick from the start. I brought her home from the hospital when she was 7 months old after several surgeries, including two open heart surgeries at Children’s Memorial Hospital of Chicago. She was on continuous oxygen, and a feeding tube was permanently placed into her stomach for continuous drip feedings from a pump. She required medications around the clock.
She lost hearing after one surgery and struggled to learn to speak. She also struggled to learn to eat. All the while, I stood there at her side, unable to fix any of this. She was amazing and she will never leave me, but to say I faced struggles is a gross understatement, especially because our support systems lived hundreds of miles away and our health insurance was in Chicago.
I have remarried. I have had another child, a healthy one this time. Callie will be the judge of whether or not I am a good mother this time around. I can do nothing but hope that my art practice will facilitate my wellness and the wellness of my current family, right along with that of my audience. That is certainly my aim.
We’d love to hear more about your business.
Since the death of my firstborn and that of my first marriage, little by little I have become an artist. In 2012, I started to accept commissioned work, taking long time interests in drawing, painting, and printmaking into a new direction. In 2017, I started regularly showing my work locally and won an Honorable Mention for my figurative work in ceramic sculpture at a juried show in Chicago.
In 2018, I became the featured artist at a new gallery in Evanston, Ice House Gallery, exhibiting figurative work in both two and three dimensions. Recently, I started to sell my work to the public. Currently, my abstract photographic work is being shown at Jackson Junge Gallery’s Red Exhibition (open through May 6), the Fine Arts Gallery at Northeastern Illinois University (through April 27th) and in a new show at Ice House Gallery (on display from April 7 through July 29th, 2018).
In the summer of 2018, I am looking forward to creating a collaborative earth art installation in China on the campus of the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute. Today, I am an interdisciplinary artist, a caregiver, and a student of nature. My images are both inwardly and outwardly directed, both spiritual and sensual. I use texture, light, color and implied motion to invoke the viewer’s senses and engage in a dialogue about corporality and transcendence.
I find inspiration in my daughter(s), natural happenings, as well as mystical poetry. I tend toward media capable of highlighting the transience inherent in the natural world. To give an example, I will sometimes choose to print photos on vellum or create collage work using nontraditional materials including wax paper and flour which are traditionally simply consumables.
My work does bear the stamp of my life experiences. I understand that my exquisitely personal losses are, quite paradoxically, very commonplace. My work seeks to speak about unspeakable truths in ways which are easily perceived. My work involves facing harsh realities head on and tenderly re-framing them. In doing so, I help to create a world which is becoming unshakably strong.
What were you like growing up?
I grew up in the Detroit area and was the second of five girls, my built-in playmates. I had a very physically active childhood. I enjoyed being outdoors, playing in the woods, riding bikes, building forts (of wood in the summer and of snow in the winter), collecting feathers and shells, making sand castles, and running boats made of sticks in the streams. There were not many girls in the neighborhood, so my four sisters and I played kickball, baseball, badminton and ice hockey with the local boys.
For vacation, we would go camping in tents and fish for our dinners. If we went somewhere, we drove. This was back in the day when seat belts were not required and there were no electronic devices to occupy us. I would look out the window and say “click” when I saw something beautiful pass before my eyes. My dream was to be a National Geographic photographer. In high school, I ran cross country and played volleyball.
My junior year, I was selected to attend a summer poetry camp. Family was another major component of my childhood. A large part of my upbringing consisted of spending time with grandparents or cousins, nearly every weekend. We completed puzzles together, played cards and board games, watched cartoons on Saturday mornings, went to church every Sunday, and had dinner at the table as a family every evening.
Family, the great outdoors, and religion were all extremely important parts of my upbringing.
Contact Info:
- Address: 906 Oakton #3 Evanston IL 60202
- Phone: 847 903 6307
- Email: laverej@gmail.com
- Facebook: Jennifer Derwinski Kling
Image Credit:
Jennifer Frankfurter
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