Artist Reveals Inner Feelings Through Yarn

Jano slowly walks the length of the gallery and pauses before each of her works.

“I did this one when there was a full moon,” she says as she stands in front of the piece she calls “Female Warrior Spirits Gathering.”

“Here, my spirits are either looking into my past or seeing the future,” she says of another picture titled “Ancestor’s Blessing.”

Jano, formerly Topanga Canyon housewife Janet Smith, realizes that her words might sound . . . well, spacey, to cynics. But the life experiences that inspired her work have been far from spacey. She experienced the painful breakup of two marriages and the death of a son, who, through a drowning accident at age 3, was what the doctors called a vegetable until his death at 11.

“He couldn’t talk,” Jano says. “He could only communicate through certain eye movements and sounds. But I knew that there was a spiritual person in there and that’s who you connect with. I realized that, my God, he is my teacher. I had to learn about loving unconditionally. And I had to walk through pain and loss to realize that there is no pain and loss.

“Through my son, I found inner knowing, but you can’t explain that to friends,” Jano says. She could, however, explain her spiritual discoveries through her art.

Jano creates what she calls “yarn paintings.” Full of bold shapes and colors, her pieces are packed with emotion.

But there was a time when Jano made only pretty pictures. “I was playing the role of wife then--you know, don’t use your brain. I’d use pastels and watercolors. . . . It wasn’t even a hobby then; it was a way of escaping my marriage.”

Slowly, Jano realized that she could experience a healing process through her work. “Whenever I’d go through horrible pain, I’d start doodling and it came out Indian,” she says.

Jano says that up until a few years ago, she’d never seen the yarn paintings made famous by Mexican Indians, yet she was producing works that had clear Indian symbols and messages. “I never knew they existed,” she says. “But I use my primitive instincts”; the works “come from my soul.

“People don’t always understand that,” Jano says. “They’ve patted me on the back and said, ‘Have another drink,’ or they’d say, ‘Oh, you do Southwestern work. How trendy.’ But I honestly don’t know what it is. There is some African, some Peruvian, some Mexican, some American Indian. . . . One woman says that she sees an Oriental influence in one painting.”

Trendy definitely does not describe Jano. She cringes when people ask her to make yarn paintings in “decorator colors” (mauve, teal) to match the color schemes of their living rooms (although she has occasionally done such work), and she has left behind the comforts of her Topanga Canyon home for a tiny house in Yosemite where she says “my back yard is the forest.”

It is in the wilderness that Jano feels she can best journey through the latest leg of her quest for spiritual peace. “I’ve hated cities all of my life,” she says. “But I crave nature.”

Jano’s yarn paintings and Juan Quezada’s ceramic works are on display through July 7 at the Scott-Toyne Gallery, 17200 Ventura Blvd., Encino (818) 789-4998. There is an opening reception from 7 to 10 tonight.