In Where The Light Gets In, artist JenMarie Zeleznak investigates the subtle forces that shape interconnection—between organisms, systems, and environments. Through intricate, intuitively constructed drawings, Zeleznak explores the ways in which adaptation, empathy, and belonging function as modes of survival. Her work draws on Darwin’s The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals to consider how emotions are not only communicated, but embodied across species and time.
Her process is meditative and meticulous, with each piece carefully rendered using watercolor pencil on paper—form building slowly through finely attuned observation. Geometric forms float behind the animals—some drawn directly from NASA star maps, others intuitively mapped as visualizations of unseen energy fields. Together, they function as diagrams of perception, or cartographies of the unseen—structures that suggest a sensory field beyond the five senses. The precision of the minimalist geometry is contrasted by the surrounding atmosphere of vast white light, creating a tension between the physical and the ephemeral. The result is a body of work that invites viewers into a shared field of sensing—where light, gesture, and presence serve as points of connection, and where awareness emerges gradually through relation and attunement with nature and each other.