Janie Stamm
Wet Garden
January 24 – April 6, 2025
Hours: Saturdays from 12-4pm
“Wet Garden” is part of our 2024-2025 series of juried exhibitions. Exhibition hours at the High Low Gallery. Gallery hours are 8a-4p every day.
Wet Garden
By Janie Stamm
In 2019, I read Karen Russell’s climate change story, The Gondoliers, in which a group of sisters living in an apocalyptic, flooded Florida learn to navigate treacherous waterscapes through echolocation. Russell’s story prompted me to think about evolving alongside rising sea levels—begrudgingly embracing the flood and using it as a means of survival.
An aquifer is a fully submerged geological formation that holds and filters freshwater. The entire state of Florida rests atop one of the largest continuous aquifers, the Floridan Aquifer. Throughout the Everglades, parts of this aquatic limestone formation are exposed as rocky outcroppings. Due to the porous nature of limestone, small pockets and pools of water, called solution holes, form in the rock. These holes, often becoming tiny ecosystems, allow water to drip further down into the aquifer.
What would happen if more than just water slipped into the aquifer? Can objects and histories filter down through these ancient limestone formations and rest safely in underwater caverns? Could the same be true for the stories of queer people? If parts of Florida will be lost to the wrath of climate change, is it possible to preserve queer history while evolving alongside the flood?
This body of work addresses the need to safeguard the most ephemeral histories, particularly those tied to the queer community, during a time when safe queer spaces are becoming an endangered habitat.
ARTIST BIO
Janie Stamm was born and raised on the edge of the Everglades in Broward County, Florida. She is a craft-based artist currently residing on the western banks of the Mississippi River in Saint Louis, Missouri. Her work focuses on preserving Florida’s environmental and queer history in the face of climate change through embroidery and assemblage.
Janie received an MFA in Visual Art from Washington University in Saint Louis. She was the recipient of several awards including two RAC grants, Critical Mass grant, Dubinsky Scholarship to study at the Fine Arts Work Center, and the Frida Kahlo Creative Arts Award from Washington University in St. Louis. Her work was featured on the cover of the December 2016 issue of Poetry magazine and in the Spring 2021 issue of CandyFloss Magazine. Janie was an artist in residence at ACRE, the Cite Internationale des Arts, Aquarium Gallery, SAFTA, and Craft Alliance.
