Portfolio: Jenny Campbell
Screen Painter Jenny Cambell Keeps Up a Tradition
April 5, 2008
By Hope Keller
Jenny's Portrait by Bryan Burris
Screen Paintings Courtesy of Jenny Campbell
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During the 11 years of what she describes as her Westminster exile, Baltimore artist Jenny Campbell had the Mona Lisa standing watch at her back door. The enigmatic, dark-eyed woman startled the neighbors, which might have been the artist’s idea.
Campbell painted a rendition of the famous canvas on her back-door screen, bringing a Baltimore folk-art tradition to the country. Screen painting became popular in early 20th-century East Baltimore. Residents painted pastoral scenes, usually of a red-roofed white cottage surrounded by trees, with a pond and swans in the foreground. The paintings were a way to prevent people from looking into a rowhouse and to keep the rooms cool. “You can see out but they can’t see in,” a popular saying went.
Campbell, an Essex native who works in the photography department at The Walters Art Museum, started painting screens about 10 years ago. “I was doing tattoos before that,” says the artist, who also sews her own clothing, including corsets and dresses made of painted screens.
Campbell’s screen paintings of Baltimore cityscapes are for sale at Hometown Girl in Hampden. They will also be featured in Rowhouse Rembrandts, a show set for May 9 and 10 at the American Visionary Art Museum.
Hometown Girl
1001 W. 36th St.
410-662-4438
www.celebratebaltimore.com
American Visionary Art Museum
800 Key Highway
410-244-1900
www.avam.org
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