Jaffery’s Cityscape Portraits Combine People, Places Close to Her

Jenna Jaffery in her home studio.

by Tim McMahan

Drive west from Omaha for about 20 minutes and you'll find yourself in Valley, Neb. Before you get there, take the E. Meigs St. turnoff from HW 275. Before you know it, you're driving on dirt roads surrounded by a canopy of shaggy trees. Along unmarked paths representing streets are small, mostly hidden houses that look like they were built sometime in the early '70s. Every gated dirt lane driveway sports a pickup truck, and, if you drive a few more blocks east, you'll hit the muddy Elkhorn River.

It's in this hidden neighborhood known as King Lake that Jenna Jaffery has built her dream art studio out of a large metal shipping container - a massive 40-by-8 - permanently mounted just a few yards from her new home.

"This has always been the dream I shared with my husband," she said from inside the wood-planked container surrounded by paintings created for her one-person show that opens at Ming Toy Gallery July 5.

The heat in the giant metal box is stifling, but doesn't bother Jaffery as she cradles one of her many stray-cats-in-residency. "We're going to spray foam insulate and put up drywall or plywood, nothing fancy," she said. "And then we'll cut a couple vents and add a little window air conditioner. I'm not sure yet what we'll do for heat in the winter."

It's a work in progress, but the advantages to this new studio space are obvious. Unlike the space she rented for 12 years, this new studio gives her almost unlimited space to create her large canvasses or whatever she decides to make in the future.

It's a dream that began as a sophomore at Elkhorn High School when, after repeated knee injuries sidelined Jaffery's athletic efforts, her art teacher, Mr. Auck, handed her a paintbrush and told her to make something. Without any previous art instruction, Jaffery began painting her first large portraits. One of those portraits, of Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps, caught the eye of an Elkhorn High parent who commissioned Jaffery to paint portraits of four Olympic athletes sponsored by his company, TD Ameritrade.

"I realized, wow, I can actually make a living doing this," she said. After graduating from Elkhorn South High, Jaffery's portfolio earned her acceptance to the Chicago Art Institute. But the prospect of taking on thousands of dollars in tuition debt kept her from pulling the trigger on college. Instead, Jaffery got her first studio at Hot Shops at the age of 18.

Hot Shops and Therman Statom

Her Hot Shops experience helped Jaffery define her artistic style, which, she said, was initially influenced by the wild, loose strokes of American expressionist LeRoy Neiman, known for his iconic, colorful portraits of sports figures like Muhammad Ali, Joe Namath and Arnold Palmer. "I could relate to how he paints because I had already been painting like that," Jaffery said of Neiman's almost improvisational brushwork. "I've never been good at coloring in the lines, which explains why I paint the way I paint."

Fellow Hot Shops resident artists like Will Anderson and Tim Barry also influenced Jaffery's process as well as how she approached the business of being an artist. "Will taught me to work with the paint instead of against it," Jaffery said. "Tim pointed me toward public art projects and broke down step-by-step how to work with a client."

Barry pointed Jaffery to her most influential mentor when he helped her get an assistant's job for renowned glass artist Therman Statom at his downtown Omaha studio. Statom's public artworks have been permanently installed at prominent locations, including the Los Angeles Public Library, Corning, Inc. Headquarters, the Mayo Clinic, San Jose Ice Center, the Toledo Museum of Art and the Jepson Center for the Arts in the Telfair Museum, Savannah as well as several hospitals across the country.

"He's got a piece in the Smithsonian Black History Museum, which I hand washed and got ready to ship out," Jaffery said. "I was his third arm. Wherever he was, I was and whatever he was doing, I was doing, too."

A very public example of her work with Statom is the large, colorful aluminum leaves that can be seen outside Inner Rail Food Hall at Aksarben Village. Jaffery said she deeply engrossed herself in Statom's projects during her two years as his assistant, effectively disconnecting from the Omaha art scene as well as her own art.

Then in 2021, an illness affecting Jaffery's father forced an end to the assistantship with Statom so she could focus on her family while also allowing her to begin creating her own art again and dealing with mental health struggles that have plagued her throughout her life. "I've always dealt with anxiety; it's been a big blocker in my life," she said.

A Portrait in a City

Jaffery discovered that a new technique involving the painting of cityscapes provided a calming effect to her anxiety. "The cityscapes don't require a lot of thought, but they do require intention," she said. "It wasn't until this past year that I figured out why I paint what I paint. It's a way to reset myself and bring myself back to equilibrium. And I love doing it for others, too."

With her new art exhibit, "Identity Terrain: Portraits and their Landscapes," Jaffery combines the abstract draftsmanship of her cityscapes with portraits of people who have had a profound impact on her life, beginning with her husband, Ahmad, the subject of the first painting that merges his portrait with a cityscape resembling his homeland of Afghanistan. Other portraits are of friends, family and acquaintances "who have all been extremely influential in my life," Jaffery said.

"Where a road becomes an ear, or a lamppost creates structure, the paintings tell a story of the effect of an environment on an individual," Jaffery said in her artist's statement.

This new collection of paintings - done on canvas in acrylic paint and colored pencil - marks a return to the Omaha art scene for an artist confident she can achieve her personal goals without leaving the place where she was born.

"I want my art to be out there, but I don't need or want to be very famous," Jaffery said.

"I want my art to connect me with people that I am destined to be connected with. I'm satisfying this itch in myself to create what I want to create."

“Identity Terrain” is on display through July 27. An opening reception is set for Friday, July 5, from 6:00 to 9:00pm at 6066 Maple Street in downtown Benson. Regular gallery hours are Wednesday and Friday from noon to 5pm, Thursday from 4 to 8pm, Saturday from 9am to 1pm + by appointment (call or text 402.681.1901).

Jenna.