Candy P. Jernigan (1952 – June 5, 1991) was an American multimedia artist, graphic designer, and set designer, instrumental in the avant-garde art scenes of Provincetown and New York City in the late 1970s and 1980s. She is best known for her vivid collages of found objects she described as "rejectamenta",[4] presented in diagrams to absurd effect. Jernigan is also known for having designed the covers and jackets of dozens of music albums and books as a colleague of Paul Bacon.[5][6][7]

Candy Jernigan
Candy Jernigan watching a kathakali performance, c. 1983–1984
Born1952
DiedJune 5, 1991(1991-06-05) (aged 39)
Other namesCindy Jeroniga[a]
Alma materPratt Institute
Occupation(s)Multimedia artist, illustrator, graphic designer, set designer
Known forPot Crushed on Houston (1985), Found Dope (1986), Ten Kinds of Beans (1986), Sets of John Moran's The Manson Family (1990)
SpousePhilip Glass[3]
Signature

Biography

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Born in Miami in 1952, Jernigan graduated from Miami Palmetto High School in 1969 before attending the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn,[8][better source needed] and first worked as a set and costume designer in Provincetown, Massachusetts before 1975. She was described by realist painter and friend Lisbeth Firmin as an influential figure in the town's arts scene, being extensively involved in its theatre and the Provincetown Art Association.[9] Alec Wilkinson would describe her in a 1994 reflection on her time in Provincetown as witty, withdrawn, and modest in promoting her work. She kept a large macaw named Jack, and spent much of her evenings trying new studies of landscape painting and still lifes. Maintaining contact with Firmin and others who moved there, Jernigan moved back to New York in 1980, where she would take up work as a set designer for a dance company, and designed and illustrated dozens of covers for books and albums.[1][10][11] She met Philip Glass in 1981 on a flight from Amsterdam to New York, and during their relationship would go on to design several of his album covers including The Photographer, Dance (Nos. 1-5), and In the Upper Room, among others.[6][12] Within a few years she had moved in with Glass in his rowhouse in the East Village, helping to raise his children from his first marriage, Juliet and Zachary. Although identified as his third wife, the couple would spend the majority of their relationship as cohabitants, before marrying in 1991.[13][14] Jernigan died the same year of liver cancer at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, following a prolonged period of illness, having only been correctly diagnosed within weeks of her death.[6][15]

Following her death, a memorial fund for granting awards to dance choreographers and creators was set up in her name; her work would largely remain in storage in her Manhattan basement studio through the 1990s until the posthumous collection of her work Evidence: the Art of Candy Jernigan, was released in 1999.[16] Sponsorship for performing arts projects, as well as exhibition of her work has been in recent years managed by The Candy Jernigan Foundation for the Arts, under Philip Glass's Aurora Music Foundation.[17]

Art career

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Early sketch by Jernigan when she was art director of Provincetown Magazine for "beautifying" the Pilgrim Monument, along with her pseudonym "Cindy Jeroniga", 1977

While in Provincetown, Jernigan would serve as a set designer, and board member for the Provincetown Art Association and Museum and Provincetown Theater Company, as well as art director for Provincetown Magazine.[18][19] One of the earliest exhibitions of her work was at the East End Gallery in 1977, operated by fellow artist Allegra Printz.[20] Moving to New York city in 1980, Jernigan went to on establish herself as a book designer over the next decade of her career, working for noted book designer Paul Bacon, introduced to her by Laurie Dolphin.[7][21]

In her own artwork Jernigan would work with several different mediums, including watercolors, oil painting, pastels, and mixed media such as Xerox art.[22] A contributing member of the International Society of Copier Artists, her work was featured in multiple issues of its quarterly, including its first "bookworks" edition, an annual issue made up of separate booklets by different artists.[23][24] Among her most notable works in mixed media were her "trash archivist" works, with several comprising New York City garbage including wrappers, packaging, and drug paraphernalia such as needles, vials, and caps. Jernigan would dub such objects "rejectaments" or "rejectamenta",[4] items which have lost purpose or are disposable, with her work described contemporarily by a reporter for The Morning Call as "a glorification of the insignificant... rather to serve as evidence of our being. [Jernigan] creates unwanted relics of a society that wishes to be remembered on a much grander scale and not in the ordinary sense of its most basic ideas."[25] These found object works include Found Dope, Found Dope II, and Box O' Roaches, the latter being several of the insects mounted on velvet, in a 1989 New York Magazine interview, Jernigan would characterize the piece– "I wanted them to look regal".[26] Another example of the use of bugs in her work was her 1985 piece, Dead Bug Book; upon returning to her and Glass's summer cottage in Cape Breton, Jernigan found the house to be overrun with bug corpses, and rather than throwing them out took the time to collect and draw them for her work.[27]

Following her diagnosis with liver cancer, she spent her last weeks developing a seldom-exhibited series of pieces, called Vessels, painting more than 80 watercolor on paper paintings in a span of 2 weeks.[12] The series, features Greco-Roman vases and other simpler containers placed on colorful stages expressing different tones and characteristics about the spaces the objects occupied.[5]

Candy Jernigan's work has been featured in the Dance Theater Workshop in 1985 and 1989, at the Bronx Museum and Lumen Travo in 1987,[28] and posthumously in McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, Provincetown Art Association and Museum in 2002, and at the Greene Naftali Gallery in 2014.[29][30] Her work is included in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art[31] and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago.[32]

Selected works

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Book jacket designs

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Album covers

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  • The Photographer, Philip Glass (1984)
  • Formal Abandon, Michael Riesman (1986)
  • Dance (nos. 1-5), Philip Glass (1988)
  • Music in Twelve Parts, Philip Glass (1988)
  • Passages, Ravi Shankar and Philip Glass (1990)

Compilations and books

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  • Please Save My World: Children Speak Out Against Nuclear War (1984) OCLC 11030523, illustrator
  • Dead Bug Book (1985) OCLC 52783499[b]
  • Pop Tops of the Modern World (1985),[22] 6 piece folio, limited printing
  • 9 (nine) Unknown Landscapes (1986) OCLC 81664634
  • Evidence : the Art of Candy Jernigan (1999) OCLC 40668064, posthumous compilation

Set design and visuals

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  • "Snapshots," debut by Ralph Fredericks, directed by Grant King, Provincetown Theater Company, 1978 (set design of cast portraits by Jernigan & Lisbeth Firmin)
  • "The Richest Girl in the World Finds Happiness", directed by Charles Horne and James Bennett, Provincetown Theater Company, 1979
  • "Happy Birthday, Wanda June", directed by Ron Weissenberger, Provincetown Theater Company, 1979
  • "State of the Heart", by Cyndi Lee, 1983[c]
  • "This Statement Is False (The Liar's Paradox)", by Mary Ellen Strom, 1988
  • "Nuts: (homage to Freud)", by Cyndi Lee, 1989,[c] sets and costume design
  • "The Manson Family: An Opera", by John Moran, 1990

Notes

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  1. ^ According to Alec Wilkinson, Cindy Jeroniga is a pseudonym Jernigan used often when working as an art director for an unnamed pornographic magazine in the early 1980s.[1] Its earliest recorded use was in the first issue of Provincetown Magazine in 1977, of which she was also art director.[2]
  2. ^ Posthumously published as The Dead Bug Box : 24 postal cards (1999) by Chronicle Books
  3. ^ a b Film of production in collections of New York Public Library

References

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  1. ^ a b Wilkinson, Alex (1994). "Lost Friends: Candy Jernigan". Provincetown Arts. Christopher Busa.
  2. ^ "Monumental Ideas" (PDF). Provincetown Magazine. Provincetown Arts Association. 1977. p. 53. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2019-06-15. Dear Editor, Cover the monument with a giant plastic replica of the Statue of Liberty. Tourist ships coming to America for the first time will think this is New York, especially when the see the prices. Cindy Jeroniga - 20 Bangs Street
  3. ^ "[Page J 115755]". SortedByName. Tom Alciere. Archived from the original on 2019-06-15. JERNIGAN, CANDY P. married a groom named PHILIP GLASS in the year 1991 on license number 8571 issued in Manhattan, New York City, New York, U.S.A
  4. ^ a b Molina Garcia, Jonathan A (2012). "Candy Jernigan's Rejectamenta: Collage, Photography, and (Discarded) Body Memory". The Eagle Feather. IX. University of North Texas. doi:10.12794/tef.2012.119.
  5. ^ a b Beil, Kim (August 23, 2017). "Candy Jernigan; San Francisco at the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts". Art in America. Archived from the original on October 1, 2017.
  6. ^ a b c "Candy Jernigan, 39, A Multi-Media Artist". The New York Times. 5 June 1991. Archived from the original on 8 April 2019. Retrieved 8 April 2019 – via NYTimes.com.
  7. ^ a b Hall, Peter (May 2000). "Souvenirs of a Life". New York Magazine. Vol. LIV, no. 3. pp. 82–89.
  8. ^ "Miami Palmetto High School Memorial Page Dedicated to Candy Jernigan". HighSchoolNetwork. Classmates.com. Archived from the original on August 31, 2018. Retrieved June 15, 2019 – via miamipalmettohighschool.org.
  9. ^ Burns, Lynne (2014). "Lisbeth Firmin: Street Artist" (PDF). Provincetown Arts. Provincetown, Mass. pp. 83–86. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2018-08-27. It was during this time that Firmin met another big influence on her life, Candy Jernigan. In 1975, Firmin was given a beautiful pastel of the Pilgrim Monument in the fog for her birthday. It was drawn by Jernigan. Firmin tracked down this artist and they became good friends...
  10. ^ "CCA Wattis Institute announces solo exhibitions of Patrick Jackson and Candy Jernigan". California College of Arts. April 27, 2017. Archived from the original on June 15, 2019.
  11. ^ "Candy Land: The Art of Candy Jernigan". NewYorkBoundBooks.com. June 29, 2013. Archived from the original on June 15, 2019.
  12. ^ a b Glass, Philip (2015). "Candy Jernigan". Words Without Music: A Memoir. W. W. Norton & Company. OCLC 908632624.
  13. ^ Schwarz, K. Robert (1996). Minimalists. London: Phaidon Press. p. 154. OCLC 243860079.
  14. ^ Venant, Elizabeth (December 22, 1985). "TASTE MAKERS: People Who Shape and Define Matters of Taste : PHILIP GLASS : FROM THE ROCK HALLS TO OPERA". Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles. The library is the focal point of his house, where he lives with artist Candy Jernigan...Glass shares the cooking with Jernigan and, when the children are with them, the family gathers for a leisurely dinner. 'I like the family time,' he says. He calls Jernigan his 'girlfriend,' and says she and his daughter buy what few garments he owns.
  15. ^ Scott Hicks (director) (September 7, 2007). Glass: A Portrait of Philip in Twelve Parts (DVD). Described at 35:30.
  16. ^ "Candy Jernigan". anti-product. Archived from the original on November 26, 2017.
  17. ^ "EIN: 132767468 : AURORA MUSIC FOUNDATION INC DBA CANDY JERNIGAN FOUNDATION FOR THE ARTS". HIPAASpace. 2019. Archived from the original on June 15, 2019.
    • "Philip Glass: Music with Friends". TimeOut. Time Out America LLC. May 30, 2012. Archived from the original on June 15, 2019. In an effort to raise funds for Issue Project Room and his own Aurora Music Foundation, Philip Glass oversees and participates in...
  18. ^ Summer Catalog 1978: Sixty-fourth Season (PDF). Provincetown Art Association and Museum; Shank Painter Printing Company. 1978. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2019-06-17.
  19. ^ Eva Braun: a musical fantasy in two acts (PDF). Provincetown Theater Company, Inc. 1981. p. 7. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2019-06-17.
  20. ^ Taylor, Robert (August 27, 1978). "Art haven for talent: Provincetown permits artists to risk". The Boston Globe. Boston. p. A8. Allegra Printz's East End Gallery began last year to represent younger artists such as Candy Jernigan, Neal Beckerman, Sheila Miles and Peter Yamaoka
  21. ^ Muro, Mark (March 12, 1983). "The Man Who Makes Book Jackets; You May Not Know Paul Bacon by Name, but You'll Recognize His Bold Designs". The Boston Globe. Boston. p. 21. When, again, talk turns to his elusive 'style,' Bacon demurs once more. He turns to his assistant, Candy Jernigan, who works at a table by the window. 'Candy, what would you say characterizes my work?' 'Well, I think the illustration and the balance of the illustration and lettering usually tip it off,' she says thoughtfully. 'You also make certain type choices that seem consistent.'
  22. ^ a b A. H. Wilkens Auctions & Appraisals (December 2, 2015). "Lot 2128A: Candy JERNIGAN (American, 1952 - 1991)". invaluable. Archived from the original on June 18, 2019. Description: POP TOPS OF THE MODERN WORLD, a bound portfolio of six hand-coloured and stamped xeroxes. Each print is a drawing of a discarded pop top found in a different city
  23. ^ "I - Mailart". MoMA. Archived from the original on August 26, 2011. Vol. 4, No. 4 (Summer 1986). Photocopy and Mixed Media. 11"x8 1/2". (Unpaged). Assembling magazine. "First Annual Bookworks Edition." Sixteen-page catalog accompanies the work...Candy Jernigan (USA)
  24. ^ "International Society of Copier Artists Quarterly (gift of Louise Neaderland)" (PDF). Bard College at Simon's Rock. Archived from the original (PDF) on September 5, 2015. [Vol./No.] 5.2 - Winter 1986 - [no theme/untitled] - [Author/Cover Artist] - Candy Jernigan
  25. ^ Higgins, Tim (March 25, 1990). "Relics of Throw-Away Burnished to Perfection by Artist Candy Jernigan". The Morning Call. Allentown, Penna. Archived from the original on June 18, 2019.
  26. ^ Edward Kosner, ed. (January 9, 1989). "Neo-Ashcan". New York Magazine. Murdoch Magazines. p. 15.
  27. ^ "Existence Minimum/Maximum". loud paper. Brooklyn, New York: Mimi Zeiger. 2004. Archived from the original on October 14, 2018.
  28. ^ "AIM - ARTIST IN THE MARKETPLACE". BronxMuse. The Bronx Museum of the Arts. Archived from the original on March 24, 2019.
  29. ^ "Candy Jernigan". ArtLinked. Archived from the original on June 15, 2019.
  30. ^ Margaret Carroll-Bergman, ed. (2002). "Summer 2002 Exhibitions [advertisement]". Provincetown Arts. p. 47.
  31. ^ "Candy Jernigan". www.whitney.org. Archived from the original on 2019-04-08. Retrieved 2019-04-08.
  32. ^ "This Will Have Been: Art, Love & Politics in the 1980s - Exhibitions - MCA Chicago". www3.mcachicago.org. Archived from the original on 2019-04-08. Retrieved 2019-04-08.

Further reading

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