Poburan moving up in the art world

Time waits for no one. Jennifer Poburan knows that all too well.

The Edmonton-based visual artist seems to make the most of her days but might complain that there aren’t enough hours in each of them. It won’t come as any surprise to those who know her that, when her new exhibit opens at The Front Gallery on Saturday, some of the works will still be quite fresh.

“I’m going right up until the end,” she said, admitting that she hasn’t put the finishing touches on some of her pieces, not by a long shot. “There’s still some work that’s going to be wet.”

At least she’s laughing about it. The dozen or so paintings have a time-related theme going with them as well. Salt & Light (as the series is called) works off of the natural processes of death and rebirth that fascinate her. It is simultaneously ethereal and earthly, organic and otherworldly.

Perhaps she sees the preciousness of the passing of time that she has even made some good strides in some very diverse segments of the art world that might belie her true age.

She’s 26. The granddaughter of the late Marie Poburan is only four years out of graduating with her fine arts degree from the University of Alberta but has been working hard to make a name for herself in the local arts scene. Her presence solidified when The Front Gallery started representing her in 2011 and her art has been exhibited as far abroad as South Korea.

She also keeps busy as the adult programmer at the Art Gallery of Alberta, where she also teaches children’s programs and helps on the install crew.

Her first arts-related work, however, came early when she was still in the middle of her post-secondary studies. It was a good gig, one that has lasted, and it was a rarity in the art world because it affords her the chance to practice her craft in an unusual studio.

She’s a courtroom sketch artist for the CBC. The work, she admits, is infrequent and occasionally stressful. She must keep an emotional distance from those who stand accused and the circumstances of the kinds of trials that make the news in the first place.

Maybe paying attention to the changing landscape is the best way to stay grounded in such situations. She is interested in how the landscape is transformed or transforms itself in some ways. Poburan comes from a farm family and that’s probably where she first experienced how nothing stays the same forever, not even the ground on which you walk.

She was 10 when she and her brother spent an entire summer picking rocks out of a large hill that was being flattened to better adapt the area for horse riding. Her latest exhibit, she stated, got its name partly because salt is the substance that connects people to the earth and to change.

Her artwork contains a recurring motif, organic seed-like images with roots and sprouting shoots all at once, the breakthroughs, the passages of time on display in abstract metaphorical sense. We don’t even see the soil, only the seeds gripping downward and the branches stretching up above the pulpy mass in the middle.

The process of her work, she avers, is “physically connected” to those same processes of growth of decay: “overworking the surface … getting rid of things and then adding again through a series of layers.”

She has never lost that connection to the earth either, but these days she doesn’t just ride horses. She has her sights set high and has been climbing bigger hills to see new rocks.

“Recently though, I’ve been connecting to the idea of getting out into almost completely natural landscapes, from hiking in the Rockies which I did quite a bit of this past summer. A lot of the new work has been informed by that actually.”

Her treks still afford her the chance to observe nature at work. What she finds interesting is to take photos of the ground and examine the natural processes of erosion and decomposition where things are “growing up out of decayed areas like trees fallen, places affected by fire. Basically my work is a balance between that growth and decay.”

The world, she says, is something that’s always moving, always changing.

“Even with the seasons, it’s a struggle to have any sort of consistency. That’s just one of the things we have to deal with living in our environment, especially here.”

Her work, she ended, is expected to be a continuation of her study of change, of life and death, and of the perspective of bodies moving through new spaces, including psychological landscapes. She hopes that her next adventure – a hike up Mt. Kilimanjaro in the new year – will find its way into her art in a new dimension.

“What I think is going to be really cool about that experience is that you actually move through five different climate zones,” she said. “Not only is the mental and physical journey on yourself something that hopefully will be some kind of informant to a new body of work. I think that physical change in the landscape will be something that will be lots to look at. Hopefully I make it to the top!” she laughed.

Until then, she’s also working on teaching classes out of her home studio. That business, it seems, is still in its seedling stage.