The Tiny Gallery, from Gifts of Art, presents paintings by Jaye Schlesinger: POSSESSED: Selections from an Artist's Everyday Belongings. 

Jaye Schlesinger's Artist Statement: 
Several years ago I began to simplify my life, parting with unnecessary belongings as a way to create space for meaningful activities and relationships. The commitment to this process merged with my art-making and become the basis for my project, POSSESSED - a documentation, in painting, of everything that I chose to keep. For two years, I painted either individual objects or groupings of objects, and the result was a total of 380 small oil paintings representing all of my possessions. They were exhibited on a 25 foot long wall at the University of Michigan Institute For the Humanities in 2017. POSSESSED asked questions about the objects that have meaning to us, how much we really need, and why it is hard to let go. It sparked conversations about what we choose to live with and what those objects reveal about our deeper selves.

Showing a selection of these paintings in this context provides a new perspective on this work. No longer representing the totality of all of my belongings, each object takes on a new significance; they become larger-than-life icons of contemporary life. Whereas the original exhibit of all 380 paintings aimed to consider, seriously, the stuff we choose to live with, in this current iteration I simply hope to create a sense of whimsy and to pay homage to our humble everyday objects.

To learn more about this work, visit JayeSchlesinger.com.