Jeannie Cartabiano

As an artist and educator in California, Jeannie has spent the last 15 years working with the community, universities, and city agencies encouraging the integration of public art with capital improvement projects. As a result of this field work she has collaborated with a consortium of artists, architects, educators, and other planning and social science professionals outside the gallery world. The projects she has developed range from new construction and landscape design to developing policy and criterion for producing citywide public arts master planning. Her studio work ranges from conceptual to abstract.

Cartabiano states, “There are several ideas operating in my current work. My paintings and drawings respond to the rectangle; an intrinsic element to the historic, conventional frame.” She goes on to say, “My abstract field paintings proceed from a much looser or fluid process. An image is built up as layer upon layer of mark-making and color interact with one another; adding and masking. It’s the process of this interaction, which privately unveils some unexpected image to me; after the fact so to speak, and I go from there. I try to remove anything that feels too safe. The resulting and unplanned image relies more on spontaneity, but is just as deliberate as the more representational work I’ve done.”