Reception: Saturday, November 6, 1:00-4:30 PM

With a background in painting, printmaking, and digital photography, Jeanie Schermesser’s recent work explores self-portraiture. Believing that the figure mirrors inner thoughts and feelings, Schermesser uses her body as a visual canvas to challenge concepts of ideal beauty and body image. Born with one arm, the artist confronts this aspect of herself for the first time in her work. Having lived outside the boundaries of the “norm” all her life, Jeanie questions established concepts of physical beauty and rebels against those parameters as the basis for quantifying an individual’s sense of worth and self-esteem. She sees the human body in its true light, in its essence, as pure, sculptural, form.

Originally from Ohio and now living in Erving, Massachusetts, Ms. Schermesser holds a B.F.A. from the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston. Several years ago, she enrolled at Greenfield Community College to further her career, earning degrees in Media Arts and Graphic Design. As a professional artist, educator, and free-lance graphic designer, Jeanie exhibits throughout New England, teaches at area art museums, community art schools, and educational collaboratives, and accepts work on commission. She has created many large scale murals for the Eastern States Exhibition in Springfield, the Department of Conservation and Recreation in Boston, and the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, to highlight a few. Schermesser’s work is spiritual and intensely personal, often transcending reality into the genre of fantasy/surrealism.