"The work in this show reflects my abiding interest in words, language and books, including those in languages I don’t know. I particularly love old, worn books rich in history.

I rarely work in the studio with a preconceived idea. More often than not, the materials tell me what they want to do. A French friend brought me several books of Voltaire’s letters that had been deacquisitioned by the Alliance Francaise Library in San Francisco, and I incorporated some of the covers into the five wall pieces shown here. The series of multiple dot pieces celebrates the beauty of small details in everyday materials that we often overlook.
I live in a eucalyptus forest, and I love everything about these trees – the way they smell, the way they dissolve into the fog and dance in the wind. I began collecting fallen eucalyptus sticks, and experimented wrapping them in different papers. I like using old Chinese and Japanese book papers both for the beauty of their characters and for the tensile strength of the paper, and I also wrapped some sticks in string made of twisted strips of these papers.

One thing leads to another, and making string from paper strips suggested knitting the paper strips instead. The stretched webbing on an old shoji frame was the result.

I love giving humble materials the elegant presentation they deserve. "

Janet Jones is the second of three generations of graduates of the California College of Arts and Crafts, bracketed by her mother, who was an art teacher and painter, and her daughter, a graphic designer and painter. After graduation she spent several years working in oils, watercolor and mixed media. Highlights of this period were inclusion in the Corcoran Biennial in Washington, DC, and a solo exhibition of small relief paintings at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor. Graphic design occupied the next fifteen years, creating work for corporate and consumer clients. At the same time she studied printmaking, which became her focus for many years. Experimenting with unorthodox methods and materials in printmaking gradually gave way to mixed media, assemblage and book arts. Her work has been included in solo and group exhibitions in the United States, Europe, Japan, New Zealand and South America, and is in many private and corporate collections in the United States and Europe. She is featured in the Lark publication, Masters: Collage, and she is represented in the Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts collection of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.