Jessica Barnd Bauer paints storms.

During, before, or after a thunderstorm, she hikes out into the countryside behind the home where she grew up and studio where she works in Sand Creek Township to get photographs.

Bauer’s out shooting photos on top of the hill, “probably when I shouldn’t be,” she said.

Then, back at River Bottom Studio, she translates her photographs to canvas, by painting with a brush in each hand or sometimes just with her fingers.

Bauer, 28, is one of the artists who will sell their wares and demonstrate the making of art during the Jordan Art Festival June 20-21 in the downtown business district.

THE MEANING OF ART

Bauer doesn’t paint clouds. Although the clouds are in the paintings, she’s trying to capture a feeling, something inside of all of us.

“For the last year, I’ve been painting storms,” Bauer said. “I like the storm as a metaphor for, I guess, your own life. … We each kind of carry our storms in our head.”

Bauer said that people have nervousness or anticipation rolling up inside of them and sometimes it’s about to break. The storms inside us might crash and boom, she said, but they also subside.

Storm paintings are about healing.

They are also, in a way, self-portraits.

“It wasn’t just about painting something because it’s beautiful. There’s usually a lot of meaning relating to myself,” Bauer said. “Usually, you don’t think of something as being both beautiful and painful at the same time. Something can be both beautiful and painful. We need both in our lives or you wouldn’t know what beauty was. If you didn’t have the pain and let it go, you wouldn’t know how good it felt to release that storm.”

Bauer is an artist who will explain the meaning of her works to you, if someone asks, but “I don’t think everyone needs to know everything about your life,” she added. “In 10 years, I don’t know if I’ll still be painting storms.”

Dunn Bros. in Chaska had been exhibiting her storm series, but she took down the paintings in time for display at the art festival. She’ll bring about 10 pieces of artwork to her festival booth, and then she’s planning another exhibit at a Jordan coffeehouse in July.
Her paintings are featured on some of the greeting cards printed by Bridging the Universe, a local company.

She also does pottery and mixed media, as well as other forms of art. Teachers need to be interdisciplinary.

Bauer is trying to put more meaning into her paintings. It’s OK for art to make the viewer mad, sad, or angry, she said.

One of her recent mixed media projects includes computer keys and the images they represent to her.

The “home” key conjured up an image of a pear seated within a nest with the key itself snuggly tucked in. She painted the fruit and used brush to make the nest protrude from the painting.

She sees potential in the keys that say things like “esc,” “pause,” “insert,” “F8” (which can be read as “fate”), and “delete.”

A self-portrait series features bubble wrap, salt, and gauze within paintings, going back to the theme of healing and also giving the paintings some unique texture.

TEACHING

Bauer, who graduated from Jordan High School in 1999, taught art students in grades 1-7 at Jordan Public Schools this year, and for four years before that, she taught art at Holy Family Catholic High School in Victoria.

She’s given classes at the art center in St. Peter and through Jordan Community Education and Recreation.

As a teacher, she said, she is programmed to show and tell. She likes to lecture on opening night of a gallery show, and she likes to put on workshops.

For the past two years, Bauer has conducted private art classes on her family’s vast property in the Minnesota River bottoms. There are vegetable and flower gardens, the river, different trees, open fields, former river bottom, trails, uninterrupted sky, and native grassland – a typical Midwestern landscape – to use as inspiration. To get the colors right in a painting, Bauer suggested doing artwork outside.

This year, she named her business River Bottom Studio and is offering classes in art and science – astronomy, ecology, drawing, painting, and more – using the nature next door as a setting for creative work.

“I’m trying to bring that option to Jordan,” Bauer said.

For her, doing art full time is the start of something bigger.

“I don’t see being an artist as something that ends,” Bauer said.

ART FESTIVAL

The Jordan Art Festival runs two days in the historic downtown business district.

A juried selection of fine arts and fine crafts exhibitors demonstrate the making of, as well as sell, their artwork. Demonstrations include oil painting, watercolor, wheel-thrown pottery, character sculpture, lampworked beads, weaving, drawing, and jewelry techniques.

Stage performers will include belly dancers, bands, and recitals. Maureen Carlson will tease with Storyclay Telling near her business. Food vendors will be there, and attendees can go on an historic walking tour. Myrna Pekarna again offers tours of the pioneer log cabin near the intersection of Varner and Water streets.

Jordan’s summer celebration – consisting of the Jordan Art Festival, the Jordan Valley Bike Tour, and Pork in the Park – is set for the weekend of June 20-21.

Hundreds of bicyclists leave the Mini-Met ballpark on June 20 and traverse Le Sueur and Scott counties with their rolling hills, forests, fields, and expansive vistas. Four routes are available from which to choose. They pass through New Prague, Heidelberg, Lexington, or Montgomery on 12-, 20-, 35-, or 60-mile routes.

Lunch and dinner are at nearby Lagoon Park, where kids games, music, and a craft fair are regular features of the Pork in the Park event.

The Metropolitan Regional Arts Council supported the art festival with a $3,000 grant again this year.

Mathias Baden is the editor of the Jordan Independent. He can be reached at editor@jordannews.com.