Words And Images

Add some heart to your living space with art that gives back. Award-winning local artist Dani Dodge has announced she will contribute 100 percent of proceeds from three paintings from her latest collection to Freedom Station, a San Diego-based organization that helps service members adapt to a new normal once they return home. The three paintings are part of her solo exhibition Poetry in Three Languages: An Art Show by Dani Dodge, currently on display at Pimento Fine Art in Olive PR Solutions through October.

 

Dodge’s art is inspired by nearly two decades of work as a journalist. She began painting in 2004 after being embedded with the First Marine Expeditionary Unit during the invasion of Iraq. After spending two months covering the war, Dodge came to understand life in a war zone, and its impact on the men and women who serve. In 2006 she was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize, but she left newspapers two years later to focus on telling stories through her art. “As a journalist, my life was words and I used them to describe everything I saw,” Dodge says. “When I became an artist I began telling stories of life in images. With this show, I will attempt to bring my history and my future together.”

 

In more than 20 new never-before-displayed works, Dodge layers scenes and found words, repeated many times, to create new meaning in everyday urban living. Her works mix different media — acrylic paint, spray paint, ink, and collage — to create raw, abstracted images that tell tales of loneliness, joy, pain, and triumph. Her inspiration comes from the many ways in which people cope in crowded cities, where strangers jostle hostility, lust, and comfort, often within the same block or subway car. “The three paintings ‘Home in a Strange Land’ depict the challenges that service members experience when they return home with images and memories locked inside their minds that change them forever. Yet, everything around appears to be the same, leaving them feeling out of place,” Dodge says.

 

The Freedom Station is committed to assisting and adding comfort to the recovering injured from all branches of the service, and to helping them achieve a better quality of life. This effort began with the formation of The Warrior Foundation, led by Rick Roberts of KFMB760, and the San Diego Council of the Navy League.

 

Along with the current installation at Pimento, Dodge’s work can be seen at the monthly Ray at Night Art Walk in North Park and at SDAI: Museum of the Living Artist in Balboa Park. (619/955-5285, www.danidodge.com)   MASON RICHEY