About Silent Spaces and Janet Onofrey

The images in this series are few of the plein air paintings created from life on the Skopelos Island, supported by an award from The South Florida Cultural Consortium Fellowship Program Janet Onofrey received in 2015.This award financially allowed Onofrey to apply to residencies and she was accepted to the Skopelos Foundation for the Arts, on Skopelos Island in the Aegean Sea of Greece. Their mission is to promote the visual, performing,and literary arts through cultural exchanges. Guided by the Hellenic history and culture, the Foundation promotes artistic dialogue between the Greek,American and International communities of artists. The South Florida Cultural Consortium Fellowship Program offers the largest regional,government-sponsored artists’grants in the United States, awarding $15,000 and $7,500 fellowships to resident visual and media artists from the counties of Broward, Martin, Miami-Dade, Monroe, and Palm Beach

Yellow Line Series

When I moved to the city, I rented a great three-story apartment. A little after 2:00a.m., pulsating red and blue lights from a police car below woke me. My apartment sat on the corner of an intersection that was the first turn-off for motorists caught in a speed trap. I was compelled to watch the ritual:the questions, evidence of registration,and eventually, the walking of the yellow line to prove sobriety. This yellow line became an integral part of a moment that changed their lives.This body of work reflects the community’s inhabitants that unknowingly interact with this yellow line at different times of day. Their actions are mundane and routine but presented as a whole; they feel connected and simultaneously detached. This dichotomy of interaction is accentuated by our culture’s social medium. We use the word “friend” very loosely on Facebook yet are very isolated.This series also questions how art can illuminate, raise a viewers’ consciousness, never to be the same.

This series feature selected images Janet Onofrey created at the Highland Scrub Natural Area and Crystal Lake Sand Pine Scrub. These habitats represent less than two percent of Broward’s County original sand pine scrub communities, which affected by urban development are now endangered in the state.

On view: Bailey Contemporary Arts - October 1 - December 28, 2021