Janette Hopper is an artist working in various and diverse mediums. After receiving her MFA from the University of Oregon, she taught in Denmark, Italy, Germany and in the United States.
Today, she continues to produce works which have been shown in over 250 exhibitions and they are collected extensively in over 40 public museums, public venues, colleges and universities and, additionally, in many private galleries nationally and internationally, principally in Germany, France, The Netherlands, Canada, Bulgaria, Italy, Denmark and the US.

JANETTE ABOUT TOGETHER APART: #SHELTER
I used words and photography to complete my individual exploration of shelter. The first individual one is called Safe and Warm. 18 positions started when I tried to photograph my husband and I in bed cuddling. It was difficult to both photograph and be in position. Later I noticed two squashes that I had grown and thought they would work perfectly to represent “Safe and Warm”. I felt with the first photo suggesting the theme that, in a humorous way, the squash could pose for us.  Next, I walked around the yard and looked at my seeds and thought of shelter using plants. I thought about the process of gardening and cooking and photographed that from picking okra in my garden to making Bindi in my electric skillet.  When we went for a walk I took pictures of all the shelters I saw and possible building materials for shelters. We stopped at a graveyard and I thought of the ultimate shelter. I enjoyed sharing my ideas through the photos I took and words. The First Shelter collaboration: While we had a little difficulty connecting online due to time zone differences, it all turned out to be rewarding in the end. We were interested in psychological shelters rather than physical shelters. We talked about using somatic movement to show shelter at night and shelter during the day. Ari and I worked together first. She liked my owl mask so I decided to do some somatic movements in the dark. I sent the video my husband had taken of me in the back yard with a flash light to Ariana. She danced, bouncing off my movements and sent me back some combined images. We talked about it and made a few changes and we came up with the title Quintessence.  Then Loli did her first performance work for daytime. She wore a white slip and did somatic movement. Lori’s videos were awesome using her hair and hands in a beautiful way. I walked in our nearby park in the wooded area and did some more videos walking and barefoot on the moss. I also sent Ari some prints I had made inspired by this type of landscape. Ari made some dance movies thinking of the mood. She combined all of our images into a video. She and I went back and forth about where it was too long or needed omitted or how it should start or end. Basically, I was amazed at how Ari was able to project images on the slip, bring the textures from the prints and all our movements together, integrated and sometimes overlapped. I loved the layering of images and felt both videos expressed our inner feelings.

Second collaboration:  Jill came up with the idea of doing a survival kit. We exchanged some initial photographs and each of us made a beautiful and meaningful selection of objects with lists. I developed a real magic kit of objects that not only changed your perspective but fixed the problem. I like to think that in the future we will develop ways of making the world a better place that we can’t quite imagine now. I loved the brainstorming and sharing of ideas that went on in the group.
For me the sharing of the work and seeing and hearing about everyone else’s work whether your collaborators or not brought us very close together. The combined energy and comradery that developed was wonderful. We were truly together apart.