Evidence: The Art of Candy Jernigan [Hardcover]

Laurie Dolphin (Editor), Stokes Howell (Introduction), Chuck Close (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1, 1999

For eight years after her untimely death in 1991, the evidence of artist Candy Jernigan's life was stored in a quiet Manhattan basement. Drawers and shelves were crammed with paintings, collages, drawings, journals, and eclectic installation pieces like Ninety-nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall-composed of, well, ninety-nine small laboratory bottles of beer on a wall. Little known until now outside a circle of New York's artistic avant- garde, Jernigan's one-of-a-kind talent is finally brought to light in Evidence. The works collected here reveal a fierce and funny creative spirit, an artist whose commitment to documenting life as she really found it led her not only to record sample swipes of the food she consumed, but also to stuff a roadkill rat and lovingly arrange it in a diorama. Jernigan's method - using the precision of a scientist to reveal the souls of discarded objects - makes her advocacy of the overlooked at once surprisingly charming and thought-provoking. Including four gatefolds, Evidence is an art book that gives readers a witty, transformative vision of the stuff that composes our lives - and bears witness to the genius of a truly original thinker.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Reviews from: FLAUNT
PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY

Candy Jernigan's collages and photographs of scavenged material were little known outside of her artistic inner circle when she died in 1991. Recently unearthed in her basement studio, this Evidence speaks for itself, and the poignant, elegant introduction by Chuck Close is an added bonus.

When Candy Jernigan died at age 39, she left behind a tremendous oeuvre of paintings, prints, sculpture, theatrical designs and travel notebooks. Evidence: The Art of Candy Jernigan exhibits more than 100 color images of her extraordinary work, which often transformed refuse into displays that fused art with anthropology. Found Dope Part II, for example, showcases hundreds of brightly capped crack vials that she found in her poor neighborhood. The beautifully designed book makes a fitting retrospective for an immensely talented artist.

 

About the Author

Chuck Close is internationally renowned for his large-scale paintings of the human face. His work has been the subject of numerous exhibitions, including a major retrospective by the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Stokes Howell is the author of The Sexual Life of Savages and Other Stories. He lives in Southern California.

Laurie Dolphin was Candy Jernigan's design partner from the late 80's until Candy's death. She runs a design studio in New York.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 144 pages
• Publisher: Chronicle Books; illustrated edition edition (July 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0811823075
• ISBN-13: 978-0811823074
• Product Dimensions: 9.9 x 8.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #183,210 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars How well do you remember your last vacation?, August 7, 2000

By 

"ndfletcher" (Chicago) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Evidence: The Art of Candy Jernigan (Hardcover)

How well do you remember your last vacation? Or a great meal? What do you do to record the beauty around you? Do you notice the horrors of everyday life to which so many people are oblivious? Ms. Jernigan was a consumate story teller. Her stories are not of the obvious, but of the things most of us overlook, ignore and wish we could remember. Absorb this book and you'll never take a trip again without thinking of her work. This book is a true delight. The visual content is wonderful, the text informative and reserved, and the book's design and construction is almost as unique as the subject matter. If you are an artist, traveller - if you are alive - this book should be in you library. More importantly, in you life.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An intimate book about a little known artist, May 26, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Evidence: The Art of Candy Jernigan (Hardcover)

This book is an absolute treasure! Evidence: The Art of Candy Jernigan, is an illustrated and collaged journal of her travels--around the world, as well as around the city. One feels almost like a voyeur--the book is that intimate.

The book is FILLED with pictures; photocopies of her travel journal, as well as assemblages and paintings from her daily travels around the city. It is beautifully put together--so much so that it evokes a great deal of emotion. I wish I'd had a chance to meet her!

This book came from Jernigan's wish to have "proof that I had been there." There is some irony in this statement, because she died in 1991 at the age of thirty-nine, and the book was published eight years after her death.

As much as I DON'T like to compare artists, Candy Jernigan probably isn't a familiar name to many people. Having said that, I'll add that her art is reminescent of Joseph Cornell, Robert Rauschenburg, and Jasper Johns--but from a woman's point of view.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Revolutionises the mundane!!!, December 11, 2001

By 

Kate (Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Evidence: The Art of Candy Jernigan (Hardcover)

This book has become one of my bedside companions, and certainly will make you reflect upon the world in a manner that is foriegn. It is nothing like you will have ever seen, and it is more wonderful than you can imagine.

In Candy's world, everything; the smears of sauces, the crusts of bread, the crack vials found in New York, a crushed saucepan, a dead rat and the bottletop nearby Jim Morrison's grave, become worthy of attention and transformed into art.

She will make you peer at the sidewalk, wondering about the origins of that dust, make you pocket that docket in the desire to transform into a collage of your day's events.

While much of this book is her collected items, there is life to be found in her minute drawings of bugs and sausages, her tiny print and evidence of her personality is found within her dream based art.

Contrary to the previous reviewer, I find this book marvellously and wonderfully beautiful. In the tiny collections and wry but subtle observations of Candy, her life is documented and her personality radiates to the reader.

This book, seemingly a collection of food scraps and other tidbits, is evidence of her life, yes, but evidence of the beauty we can find within the seemingly mundane, the tiny, if only we give that bread crust, the leaves in the Pere La-Chaise and that dust a chance to be noteworthy.