* All images used with permission. Please do not distribute without first contacting the artist.
Jane Waggoner Deschner grew up in Lawrence, Kansas, moving to Montana in 1977. She earned degrees in geography at the University of Kansas and, later, in art at Montana State University–Billings (BA) and Vermont College of Fine Arts (MFA). She exhibits actively with recent solo shows in Kansas, Missouri, Nevada and Montana. “Face Value: Embroidered Found Photographs” is her solo exhibition at the University of Wyoming Art Museum, January 31–April 25, 2015. Juror Peter Held selected three pieces for the Missoula Art Museum’s third Triennial. Her pieces were featured in “The Embroidered Image,” an invitational show at Robert Mann Gallery, Chelsea, NYC, through the summer 2014. In the “First Person” department of Surface Design Journal’s winter 2014 issue, she writes about her work and process. She has been featured on numerous blogs including Hand/Eye, American Craft magazine’s Why I Make, House of Mirth, mr x stitch, Accidental Mysteries and Hand Embroidery Network.
She has been awarded residencies/fellowships at Virginia Center for Creative Arts (including two LEAW Foundation grants), Amherst, VA; Ucross Foundation, Clearmont, WY; The Banff Centre, Banff, Alberta, CA; Playa, Summer Lake, OR; Santa Fe Art Institute, Santa Fe, NM; Jentel Foundation, Banner, WY; Kimmell• Harding•Nelson Center for the Arts, Nebraska City, NE; and Ragdale Foundation, Chicago, IL. Fall 2010 she was a visiting artist at Red Deer College, Red Deer, Alberta. She returns to The Banff Centre for the Visual Arts Late Winter BAiR Intensive 2015. Since May 2008 she has served as a Governor’s appointee on the Montana Arts Council.
Jane explains the work by saying, “There is a richness in vernacular photos whether or not we know the person, place or time. By asking viewers to look carefully?—?to react to quotations, decipher symbols and signs, and/or puzzle out juxtapositions?—?I renew and transform their experience of looking at old photographs. By engaging them with other people’s family photos, I alter the way they see their own. They come to realize, as I did, how universal this form of expression is?—?and how precious.”