Jenny Hunter Groat

I WAS BORN IN MODESTO IN 1929 AS LAVIDA JUNE HUNT, AND I DREW AND PAINTED FROM THE TIME I WAS OLD ENOUGH TO HOLD A TOOL.
My mother remarried when I was five and we moved to Redding, California, where I attended school,and was fortunate in having gifted and dedicated teachers throughout my school years: they always gave extra in whatever field they taught, and I have never forgotten them.

My mother, a piano teacher, gave me music lessons and accompanied for a local dance teacher to pay for my classes with her. We performed often for clubs and schools.

I was a quiet child, loving to read and to be with my cats. The dance classes surely helped me to become more sociable, and later music lessons certainly gave me a "work habit" and a self-discipline that I feel has been essential in my art fields. Eventually even the simple ability to be alone for many hours at a time has served me well, especially my solitary day trips, from age 7 or 8, into the hills behind our house, carrying a lunch and often not returning till suppertime. Nature has always been important to me.

Gardening now helps give me the contact I need with the earth, now that camping is more difficult. One of my earliest memories is the wonder of ...

IN MODESTO JENNY HUNTER GROAT ATTENDED THE FIRST GRADE IN A ONE-ROOM SCHOOLHOUSE, with grades 1-6 all together. She was 5 years old When her mother remarried and the family moved to Redding, California, where Groat finished high school. After graduation she worked for a year in a bookkeeping office to earn enough money to attend school at San Joaquin Delta College and the Conservatory of the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California, majoring in Piano. AT THAT TIME SHE BECAME AWARE OF MODERN DANCE. Teacher, MARJORIE B SHERIDAN, had been a pupil of the famous German Expressionist dance/artist, MARY WIGMAN, and had been in her Dance Company. Marjorie taught Wigman's skills, heavily weighted toward improvation, solo and in groups. There was also a special kind of movement and way of using space. Groat found this totally absorbing. With Marjorie, she began to compose her own dances. Groat says, "If she had been teaching only 'technique' classes I would not have been interested, but she believed in teaching to develop the creativity in each person." Marjorie also started Groat out out in teaching children in creative dance. There she began to make the connection between formal composition as she was being taught it in music...

Recent SOLO Exhibitions:

at Elsewhere Gallery, Fairfax, Ca, April-March

and at the Tony Micelli Gallery, Woodacre, CA

San Geronimo Valley Community Center, CA: November, 2010; 15 new abstracts
Fairfax Library, Fairfax, CA (Marin County) Month of March, 2011. Abstract oils

Recent GROUP Exhibitions:
Galleria di Marchi, "Little Treasures", April 2011; Bologna, Italy. Abstract oils