“Every day I work on the pictures, I work hard on them and try my best. I take words from the box and put them on the paper. I love any one of these colors, and try to put as many as I can. It’s hard to figure out where to put the dots, the X goes at front and back. I just like doing it, it’s a good thing. It takes me a while.” -- JC

 

Jenny Cox began working at Lower Merion Vocational Training Center in 1981 as a piece worker and paper shredder. When LMVTC became Center for Creative Works in 2011, she was hesitant to explore artwork. She was eventually inspired to paint after seeing her peers try it. Early paintings feature lines and dots as design elements, and experiments with color relationships and blending. Eventually, Cox discovered markers and pens, and her work took off: marks developing into letters, letters into words, and cells of color demarcating the space of her architecturally-minded compositions.

 

Cox brings the same kind of methodical focus to creating works on paper as she had to shredding it, but brings a unique love of color and shape. Her democratic approach to her materials – cycling through a collection of markers and flash cards with words – develop a random assortment of colors and phrases on the page that are uniquely ordered by Cox’s distinctive point of view.

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Cox’s work was featured at the Outsider Art Fair in New York in 2017- 2019, 2021, and 2022, as well as at the St. Louis Outsider Arts Fair in 2014. Cox’s work has been selected for a number of exhibitions in and around the Philadelphia area, including at Fleisher/Ollman, where she was included in the Summer 2014 exhibition, returning in 2018 with her solo exhibition, Like Logs. Also in 2018, Cox’s work was exhibited at Haverford College and Rosemont College. Cox’s work is held in several private collections.

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Mentioned in Metro: ‘I’ve Never Seen Anything Like It:’ New Fleisher /Ollman show features works of artists with Developmental disabilities'

 

Mentioned in The Art Blog: 'Creative Sanctuary- Psychedelphia at Pageant: Soloveev'

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Shop Jenny's work HERE!