Jennifer Vonholstein

Jennifer Vonholstein

Born in NYC, growing up on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, I spent countless hours looking at art in The Metropolitan Museum, The old Whitney and the Guggenheim all walking distance from my house. I went to Bronx High School of Science. In the late 1970's,  after a seven month trip to India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iran, where I went through the Kyber Pass on a bus, drove in a land rover through Afghanistan with a Frenchman who traded with nomads and saw the Shahs Crown Jewels in a bank vault in Tehran, I landed back in New York City. Meeting Jean Michel Basquiat at a party, we collaborated on a series of 40 post cards. Then I joined and traveled with Squat Theater with my friend actress Eszter Balint for a few years and then left New York moving to the Adirondack park with my three small children. Living in the Adirondacks opened my eyes to the beauty of nature. Transfixed by its immensity I started to paint native plants in oil.  I plunged into the complexity and mathematics of the natural world and found solace and deep happiness from working with plants and trees. Years later, together with my husband Martin Pasi, we built a geothermal passive solar house, created a farm and orchard in western Washington State near a 14,000 foot volcano. He designs and builds pipe organs.  I am  currently working on a large-scale map of our ten acres, drawing and painting native species.