Time to Gather 🌞💜☕️

It’s going to be cold out, but I hope you’ll still join me this Sunday, November 9, 2-5pm at Thurber Park to celebrate the work that went into THE SUN WILL FIND US. Bring your coats & gloves, and be ready for some cider or cocoa. Viewing the studio on Nov 9 will be possible if I finish tidying up the studio and if you put on a mask.

If you haven’t seen the banners yet, they’re up until November 15. If you’d like to view the banners with me and hear some anecdotes…I’m doing a couple of SURPRISE GUIDED TOURS! These will be walking/biking/scootering tours.

  • Meet me at Thurber Park Friday, Nov. 7 at 3:30pm (parking on street or in front of studio)

  • Meet me at Reger Park Tuesday, Nov. 11 at 1pm (park on Marquette or Hermina and head toward the playground)

  • Please note that there are not consistent, even sidewalks around this neighborhood and if you want to attend via car, wheel chair or power chair, please email me directly and we can make a plan.

Links if you want to read about the project:

  • Here’s the press release from the City of Madison

  • Info on the project from Team Bubbler here

Hope to see you soon.

THE SUN WILL FIND US (is up and floating around Darbo-Worthington!)

The community in our physical vicinity is the community we have to rely on to keep each other safe, to make change, and lean on in a crisis. How do we connect to them more at a time when we are increasingly isolated from each other? For this project, several sites around the Darbo-Worthington neighborhood in Madison are hosting the 13 banners I made with help from the community. Each banner has an independent line of text, and together the text makes up a more whole piece of writing, all with the goal of connection. It is my hope that within these words, we can expand our own capacity for care, togetherness and justice.

It took a few months to make these banners. During sewing bees, discussions of grief, inequity and LOVE bubbled up while our hands kept busy. We slowly secured cotton letters to soft, worn bed sheets. A couple people took squares of sheets home, spreading the work out into private spaces around the city. One helper added extra squares from her stash when she noticed I had miscounted for a couple rows, choosing fabric that perfectly complemented the color palette. A dear friend took banners with letters pinned on to the Creator’s Cottage and it passed through several hands before being completed by another artist while watching a quilter speak at the central library. The same friend took another banner to a soccer game with family and taught her young nieces to sew. I took banners on multiple trips to Atlanta to care for a friend, sewing quietly as she rested, meditating on my hopes for her recovery with every stitch. I helped to host a memorial gathering for an artist that recently died, and nearly 30 people helped sew letters on that evening, including the artists’ partner and father.

At this point, I’m not sure how many people have helped. I am sure, though, that nothing could have completed this work except community. We are nothing without each other.

THE SUN WILL FIND US
SMALL SPROUTS SEEKING
ROOTS WILL SECURE US
HANDS CLASPED
RETURN PROTECTION
LOVE IS FEROCIOUS
GATES WILL CRUMBLE
WE WILL REACH YOU
AN EXCAVATION OF LOVE
THE SUN WILL FIND US

Thank yous and more info below:

There are pamphlets going out into pretty little boxes in front of each site and should be filled now! There’s a secret site, too…Look for it in Reger Park. Gratitude to every single person that helped by donating sheets, time and care to this work. Finding the sites for the banners was a group effort, and I am thankful to site hosts for offering their space as a part of the work. Thank you to the Madison Arts Commission, the Bubbler at Madison Public Library, the Town of Blooming Grove, the City of Madison, for making the Thurber Park Artist Residency possible. I planned this project as a part of the Terrain Biennial. The 2021 Terrain Biennial was when I displayed my first banner, and I am happy to have so many as a part of their event again this year.

You can sneak a peek at more photos of banners at my instagram post here, or sign up for my email newsletter at the bottom of my home page to get a more full background when I send out my next newsletter soon.

SAVE THE DATE for Sunday, November 9, 2-5pm when we will spend time at Thurber Park to celebrate and thank everyone involved in making this project come to life. 💜

Above, a close-up of one of the banners on a porch on Memphis Avenue.

Call for Volunteers - help me hang the Community Banner project!

I am looking for volunteers to help me hang the community banner project I am completing, The Sun Will Find Us. The dates are as below and all of the sites will be in or on the edges of the Darbo-Worthington neighborhood in Madison, WI. If you are available and can help, please send me an email to coordinate: jenniferHbastian@gmail.com. Please make sure to let me know what date(s) you are available and the best time of day for you. Time frames for installing are TBD based on site hosts and volunteer availability.

  • Friday, September 26

  • Saturday, September 27

  • Sunday, September 28

  • Monday, September 29

  • Tuesday, September 30

The roles for volunteer support that I could use are:

  • Assisting with hanging banners on a ladder or from the ground

  • Documenting with photographs (phone, DSLR camera, etc)

  • Carrying supplies

Thanks to anyone who is able to consider supporting this project!

Testing out hanging a banner on the side of the Thurber Studio.

Included in the Indianapolis Review

I’m happy to share that my work has been included in the Indianapolis Review’s Summer Issue! You can view the site here. The IR is an online quarterly publication featuring poetry, art, and visual poetry. It is exciting to be featured alongside poets and other visual artists.

Screenshot of thumbnails on Indianapolis Review homepage with a white background and round thumbnail images of 5 artists’ work.

Above: screenshot of thumbnails on Indianapolis Review homepage.

Solo Exhibition, Unlock Your Pain, opens at Sauk Prairie River Arts Center

Unlock Your Pain by Jennifer Bastian

Exhibition Dates:  June 30 – September 7, 2025

Reception: Thursday, July 17, 2025, 5:30-7:30p, also celebrating Tea and Empathy by Alice Traore

*Jennifer Bastian is an immunocompromised artist. She has requested that attendees to the reception Unlock Your Pain wear face masks inside the gallery. This protects her health and the health of others more vulnerable than her. Bastian appreciates the care with which attendees treat her health and her work.

at the Sauk Prairie River Arts Center (105-9th Street, Prairie du Sac)

Read more here.

Above: Untitled (Flood Quilt with Cloud Frame)

Above: Omicron Balloon Garland

Grief Wave exhibition is open, Feb. programming is plentiful!

The receptions may have passed but my Grief Wave exhibition will be up until March 1 and there are many opportunities to visit with the work and engage in programming around it.

I’ll be leading public tours of my exhibition on Tuesday, February 11, 12-1:30pm and Sunday, February 23, 1-2:30pm

There’s also additional programming in the galleries at Arts + Literature Laboratory in connection to Grief Wave:

  • Tuesday, February 11, 6-7:30pm - Weaving Grief and Love: A community circle honoring grief and loss, facilitated by Shandra Bauer, grief tender and registered yoga teacher, and the Madison Death Collective Co-Founders Meghan Johnson and Taylor Franklin.

  • Saturday, February 15, 10am - 12pm - Art in the Gallery: Grief Wave, artist and educator Lesley Numbers will frame the work in GRIEF WAVE as inspiration and a jumping-off point for students to make their own artistic responses to the show. Expect to engage in some textile art and candle art using cold beeswax.

To sign up for programs at ALL, see course catalog and under “Topics,” choose “Interdisciplinary.”

Madison Magazine Feature

Big thank you to Madison Magazine & Maggie Ginsberg for including me in the Creativity Issue. I’m in such amazing company with 22 other artists and many orgs as well. Credit goes to Maria Drews for the photos.

It is a strange time to feel like promoting oneself but I am grateful to be included in this group of creative people. Buy a print copy if you want read my interview and support local print journalism!

Current Exhibitions, Fall 2023

burning at both ends

A photograph of a child jumping, and to their right, two photographs hang on a white wall. The photographs are large and show the same child before and after blowing out a candle. The background of the photo is a dark purple.

In Madison, WI, you can view Burning at Both Ends, an installation with work by myself and Heather Rasmussen. It’s on view at the Overture Center for the Arts from September 5-December 3, 2023.

Reception will be held Friday, October 6, 5-8pm.

Right: the artist’s daughter sees herself in the exhibition.

Graphic for Chronicles of the Chronic

Chronicles of the chronic

In Rochester, MN, you can see my large quilt banner, “I Have Missed You (Community Care is the Intimacy I Need)” in Chronicles of the Chronic” at the Rochester Art Center. The exhibition will be on view from August 26, 2023 - April 3, 2024. Reception will be held Sunday, September 10, 1-4pm.

I will be giving a talk in person about my work on Sunday, March 17, 2024 at 1pm.

WeTransfer Emerging Creative Hubs Feature

WeTransfer, a file transfer service, has been doing features on cities outside NY, LA & Chicago that have vibrant art communities. They chose Madison last year, and interviewed me as a part of the project. You can read my interview here, and the whole Madison feature here.

Photo by Nate Ryan

AWARD OF MERIT - 2022 WISCONSIN BIENNIAL

I was presented an Award of Merit at the Museum of Wisconsin Art for my piece in the Wisconsin Biennial, I have missed you (Community Care is the Intimacy I Need). You can see a full list of artists in the exhibition here.

This work is currently on view at MOWA until July, 2022.

In August and September, this work will be a part of a solo show at UW-Whitewater.