Jeni Pie emerges from pandemic funk with fantastical new works

When the pandemic hit, Jeni Pie stopped painting.

“I know a lot of people were the opposite, and they were productive and prolific,” Pie said. “But I just couldn’t do anything.”

Instead, struggling with a mix of apathy and grief brought about COVID-driven isolation, Pie turned to literature, reading hundreds of books, many of which at least offered some form of mental escape. But beginning early this year, the weather finally started to break for the artist. Pie said it began with a deep, post-coronavirus house cleaning and purge, which in turn motivated her to get out to a January exhibit at the Vanderelli Room that featured artwork done by local high school students.

“And when I saw that show, and the level of skill and sophistication those kids had, it was absolutely mind-boggling,” Pie said. “It really impressed me, and it was like, shoot, you know what? If these high school kids can do this, maybe I can get over this slump and finally start creating again.”

And so, beginning in February, Pie started to paint at least a little every day, reaching out early on to a friend at Rehab Tavern about booking a solo show – her first since 2019. At the time, Pie built in a needed escape hatch, telling her friend that if the work didn’t click and she had to withdraw from the show, she would do so with enough time for them to find a replacement. But that day never came. The artist kept working and the paintings kept arriving, with more than 40 filling the space for Pie’s new solo show, “No, You Shut Up,” which opens at Rehab Tavern tonight (Friday, June 9).

The watercolor and ink paintings, a majority of which feature feminine characters, pull inspiration from some of Pie’s most formative influences (she majored in costume design early in college, and she’s long harbored an interest in editorial and fashion photography) but then introduce more fantastical elements. There are women dressed as medieval queens, imaginative landscapes and mysterious details – some of which are drawn from the fantasy novels Pie absorbed during stay-at-home and further rooted in the art nouveau illustrations of artists such as Harry Clarke, Aubrey Beardsley and Kay Nielsen.

“If you haven’t read the Poe collection Harry Clarke illustrated (Tales of Mystery and Imagination, from 1919), it’s so great, because there will be a couple kissing and then it’s like, wait, why are they standing on a pile of bones? Why are there two swords and then a giant, floating eyeball in the back?” Pie said. “And what I really wanted to do was create these fantasy scenes that I’m dropping the viewer in, but it’s not really telling you anything, or spelling everything out.”

The new collection combines the whimsy of Pie’s early embroidered works – she started as an artist learning how to cross-stitch in third grade – with her developing skills manipulating watercolors. Pie said she first began to experiment with the medium prior to that 2019 solo show, drawn in part by its unpredictability. “There can be a lot of happy accidents with watercolor,” Pie said. “It can be very delicate, with this translucency, and there’s also a softness and lightness to it.”

This softer quality, Pie said, lends itself to her overwhelmingly feminine subjects, a number of whom adopt poses borrowed from the 1960s and ’70s fashion magazines collected by the artist. “It was right in the early women’s rights movement, so … they’re wearing this beautiful clothing but they’re also confident in their gaze. They were unflinching,” said Pie, who drew comparisons with this current era, in which female bodily autonomy is under increased legislative attack. “And then also I think now more women are dressing how they want, looking how they want, and carrying themselves with a confidence that is for them. It’s not for the male gaze, and I really tried to get that self-possession into the paintings.”

For Pie, this show is a culmination of a journey that helped pull her from a long pandemic funk, not only bringing her back to the practice of art but reintroducing a light that for too long had been dimmed.

“I definitely feel a lot more engaged and a lot more present,” she said. “It’s being able to appreciate the way the light looks at a certain time of day and being out with my friends. I’m friends with a lot of creatives, so it’s being out and bouncing things off of each other and rooting for each other, as opposed to hiding out in bed reading. Which, reading inspired me a lot, too. But you can’t just stay at home. … Now it’s about keeping that energy going, keeping that momentum going.”