In the Studio with Artist Jodie Mim Goodnough - Inside Art with Michael Rose

In the Studio with Artist Jodie Mim Goodnough - Inside Art with Michael Rose

 

Rhode Island is home to many artists who experiment across media. For Jodie Mim Goodnough, photography is one venue for artistic expression - but she also leverages other modes to probe important topics. Her energetic and inventive output shows off one of the state’s most passionately creative minds.

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Goodnough is not just a busy studio artist but is also an active educator. On staff at Salve Regina University in Newport since 2015, she currently holds the rank of Associate Professor. Primarily teaching photography, Goodnough’s various skillsets are undoubtedly of value to the emerging artists studying with her. But Goodnough finds great inspiration from her students, too.

 

 

Asked how teaching informs her practice, Goodnough says, “My work at Salve keeps me both inspired and motivated. Inspired by my students, and their unique way of looking at the world, and motivated to keep learning so I can teach in a way that is contemporary and relevant to the world they're graduating into. It's a delightfully circular experience being a teacher in the arts - their excitement to learn the things I've spent my life on drives me to learn even more things, which I then bring back to the classroom.”

 

Goodnough holds a BA in Studio Art from Montclair State University, a Certificate in Photojournalism from the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies, and earned her MFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts. The recipient of fellowships from RISCA and the SMFA, Goodnough received a prestigious grant from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation in 2019. She has participated in residencies at the Wassaic Project, Mass MoCA, and the Byrdcliffe Art Colony, one of the nation’s oldest art colonies.

 

 

While much of Goodnough’s work has been photographic in nature, she is an adventurous art-maker. In one engaging piece, she utilized virtual reality to comment on Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s seminal feminist text The Yellow Wallpaper and in more recent work she is utilizing fiber to create contemporary tapestries.

 

Asked about the interdisciplinary nature of her practice, Goodnough says, “I think my early training as a graphic designer has made me obsessed with the picture plane, which is the basis for anything two-dimensional that I make, whether that's a cyanotype or a tapestry. Even my three-dimensional work is still a collection of two-dimensional planes. It's just how I was trained to think. The media changes based on what works best with the content I'm thinking about, but I'm really just happily arranging shapes in a rectangle every time.”

 

 

While Goodnough has explored a variety of artistic media throughout her career, much of her work centers on issues surrounding experiences of women in psychology, psychiatry, and medical environments. In her latest body of work, she is creating tuftwork tapestries using medieval prototypes to reframe stories about women’s health.

 

Speaking of what she intends for viewers to take away from her latest artworks, which are still in progress, Goodnough states, “This body of work is really emotional and cathartic for me, and my hope is that it is for the viewer too. I've made a lot of work about the fraught experience of being a feminine-presenting person / patient with chronic illness, and how hard it can be to have your own experience believed. This was the inspiration for The Yellow Wallpaper series as well, and why I looked to that story. In these tapestries I'm taking imagery originally created by men to explain (incorrectly) how the female body works and making my own scenes and stories out of them. It's my small way of taking control over the experience of being a patient.”

 

The resulting pieces are powerful and promise to form a compelling new body of work from an already accomplished studio. Goodnough is an accomplished and multi-talented artist bringing much value to the local scene and beyond.

 

 

Reflecting on what it means to be an artist in Rhode Island, Goodnough is positive about its assets for creative people. She says, “Rhode Island is an incredible place to be an artist. I've lived in a lot of cities - New York, LA, Boston - but there's a reason I always come back here. To make good work you need space, time, and community. The relative affordability of studio space (though there could always be more), the fact that the city is easy to manage, and the built-in institutional support and resources available through places like RISCA, AS220, and the local colleges and universities all make a big difference. Plus this is just a place where people seem to be able and willing to make things happen. There are so many great small art organizations that have popped up all over the state. We definitely punch above our weight.”

 

Learn more about Goodnough at her website www.jodiemim.com.