Artist Portrait: Jennifer Adger, MPP2
by Rachael Novier on September 24, 2001 in Culture
The Kennedy School is rich with artistic talent. The classrooms of KSG are home to students who publicly generate superior academic work and privately create masterful artwork. One such artist is MPP2 Jennifer Adger, an Alabama native who studies criminal justice with fervor and paints the world around her with an unmistakable gift.
Adger’s artistic career began in junior high school, where she auditioned to study under a prominent art instructor in her area. With no prior artistic training, her audition piece was admittedly elementary. “I auditioned with a stick figure,” she said with a laugh. “I think he let me into his class because he took pity on me.”
But after only two years of instruction, Adger earned second place in a national art contest sponsored by the United States Parent Teacher Association (PTA). Her winning piece, a chalk pastel depicting a young boy with a bowed head and outstretched arms in a snowfall, hangs in her home.
The haunting image of the small boy is unique subject matter among Adger’s work. Architecture is the most common theme of the bold paintings that line the walls of her Cambridge apartment. “I love to paint buildings,” Adger explains. “I feel like the people that I paint look sad, but my buildings somehow have life.” Adger chooses her media seasonally, generally preferring to paint in oils during summer months and switching to watercolor in the winter months.
Adger’s artwork brings more than creativity to the KSG community - it brought much-needed revenue to last year’s Student Internship Fund auction, which provides funding to students seeking unpaid summer internships in the public sector. Adger donated a watercolor rendering of the Taubman Building, which became one of the silent auction’s most sought-after items. “I wanted my auction to piece to be very unusual and interesting, so I made it three dimensional.” She first painted the building, then cut up the image and backed certain pieces with foam board to add perspective and visual interest. She is considering donating another piece to this year’s auction.
Balancing the demands of school and the demands of her artwork does not present a problem to Adger. “I paint quickly,” she explains. “My paintings only take about an hour and a half to finish. I usually do them in one sitting … and I do them when they come to me. If it’s two o’clock in the morning, they wake me up and I paint. They do not care what time it is, or if I have reading to do for class the next day.”
Adger has entertained the idea of blending her interest in criminal justice with her love of art. “The law firm where I worked was interested in ways that I could depict justice in a painting.” However, she intends to keep her professional life and her artistic life independent for the time being. “I somehow think that my art is an outlet that is separate from everything else in my life right now.” No matter what her future holds, Adger’s life and the lives of those surrounding her will be enhanced by life she creates on canvas.
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