Gallery Talk: Where Water Keeps Time: Graphite Drawings by Janis Goodman

Curator Laura Coyle and artist Janis Goodman, will discuss the exhibition "Where Water Keeps Time: Graphite Drawings by Janis Goodman", in a gallery talk scheduled for

Saturday, 2:00- 3:00pm

About the exhibition:

Janis Goodman, Artist
Laura Coyle, Curator

Janis Goodman invites you to experience 25 years at Greenlaw Cove on Deer Isle, Maine, through her eyes and with her affection. Step into the landscape as she does: enter through expansive, immersive drawings, then lean in close to more intimate works that reward careful looking.

Light moving across water draws her in, but so do the cove’s finer details—marshes, osprey nests, granite outcroppings, waterfowl, and mudflats. Each demands its own visual language. Goodman responds by adapting her mark-making, even devising custom tools to capture the rhythms and textures of a place in constant flux. Every work carries a vivid sense of presence, shaped by years of returning to a landscape that is never quite the same.

Best known for her colorful abstract paintings, Goodman has been a vital force in the Washington, DC arts community, teaching for more than thirty-five years at the Corcoran School of the Arts & Design and supporting the arts through public work and media, including her role as an art reviewer for WETA TV.

This exhibition, on view for the first time, is dedicated to the power of place. What begins as direct observation becomes something more layered—memory, material, sensation, and time reworked in the studio. As you move through the exhibition, you’re invited to trace that transformation. The result is a compelling meditation on how we see, remember, and make meaning of what is special to us

This event will be held in-person at the museum.

Please direct any questions about this event to the museum's main contact for this event, Patricia Poku-Speight at [email protected].

Image: Janis Goodman, Above and Below, 2025. Graphite on paper, 22 x 30 inches. Collection of the artist. Courtesy of Gallery Neptune & Brown.

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Host or Publisher American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center