Janet Kozachek was born in Princeton Junction, New Jersey, where her formative years were spent drawing and writing in nature. Her subsequent education was unusually eclectic, having traveled, worked and studied in Europe, China and the United States. She obtained her Master of Fine Arts Degree in Drawing and Painting from Parsons School of Design in New York and a Certificate of Graduate Study in Chinese Art from the Central Academy of Fine Art (CAFA) in the People’s Republic of China.
In addition to being a painter, Janet Kozachek is also a mosaic artist and was the Founding President of the Society of American Mosaic Artists. Her work is in a number of museums and private collections, and she was the recipient of the award for excellence in drawing from Art Fields (2019), a Puffin Foundation Award, National Endowment for the Arts awards, a Heritage Foundation Award, and a Humanities Council Award. Her writing and illustrations have been published in Undefined magazine, Renditions, Ekphrasis, Local Life, Pink, Hybrid Harpy Review, The Colorado Review, The Heron Anthology, and Porlock. She is the author of My Women, My Monsters, A Rendering of Soliloquies – Figures Painted in Spots of Time, and A Book of Bothersome Cats (Finishing Line Press). Her writing awards include the Poetry Trails prize from the Poetry Society of South Carolina, and a merit award from Concrete Wolf Press for the illustrated chapbook, My Women My Monsters.
Artist Statement
Gilded Puffer Fish is a satire on the current president’s monarchical aspiration and its pathetic expression in aping both the gilded palaces of Versailles as well as the decor in Putin’s buildings. It is rumored that much of the gilding cluttering the oval office is in fact imitation gold – fitting for an imitation of glory. The decorative frame around the puffer fish in the central oval is stamped in gold paint with prints of the Chinese seal script characters that read “fake gold.” The gilding on the puffer fish itself is also metallic leaf that is brass, which appears gold but is not. As such it will tarnish over time. I made the decision to not coat the brass with protective varnish so as to allow it to tarnish in the light and air– as history will eventually bring the falsehoods of our own fraught time to light.
Instead of a fish head, the central puffer fish sports the head of Donald Trump, making the fish a metaphor for the present administration and its influences. Puffer fish are toxic creatures, exuding a chemical poisonous to most creatures. It is noteworthy, however, that dolphins are not poisoned by it and instead only become intoxicated by squeezing the fish and passing it around to their fellow dolphins in a kind of lively drugged game.
My charcoal and ink drawing, “It Sets My Teeth on Edge,” is a political commentary in the form of a dental x-ray of teeth with twisted roots, one of which sports the familiar profile of Donald Trump in the lower left cornerd. It is part of a series of charcoal drawings based upon idiomatic expressions. Here “It Sets My Teeth on Edge,” refers to real dental woes as well the emotional and psychological stress that hovering over the populace due to the chaos and cruelty of the present administration. The twisted , rotting roots of the teeth allude to a loss of integrity and moral decay.
Over the course of four years, I created a series of 20 painted soft sculptures for my Liberty Snake project. The snakes are painted with elaborate designs of acrylic washes, mono printing with large stamps, mica dust and graphite. When displayed, they are filled with recycled materials such as plastic gallon water bottles and bubble wrap. Each painted snake is emblazoned with the Gadsden flag, Don’t Tread On Me slogan that co-opts and subverts a right wing sign by substituting civil rights and public institutions under threat. The signs include Don’t Tread On: Reproductive Rights, Immigrants, Voting Rights, Women’s Health, Vaccines, National Parks, LGBTQ, the Disabled, Black Lives, Climate Science, EPA, NIH, the Elderly, Teachers, Women in Science, Books, Environment, and Anyone. Each Snake is approximately 14 feet long and 12 inches wide. They can be displayed in numerous configurations as a group or as a partial representation of just 2 or 3.