The Art of Jayne Mangino
(1950–2009)
By Margaret D. Stetz
Those who knew Jayne Mangino before her first cancer
diagnosis in 1986 understood why she identified with birds. “Jaynebird”
or “Jaybird,” as she sometimes called herself, was perpetually on the
wing, soaring high and recklessly, rarely setting down for longer than
a moment. She was a creature of the wild, in all senses of the word.
But unlike many birds, she loved to fl ock together with companions of
every feather, shade, and stripe. The all-night parties she
hosted were legendary—decadent and creative extravaganzas that saw her
still awake the next morning, ready to fly off to a bar, a coffee shop,
or another perch of observation from which to see the world go by.
Nothing weighed her down except her cameras. She traveled everywhere
with at least one slung around her neck, and her shoulder bag was more
likely to contain lenses and fi lm than tissues or a comb. Birds are
cold-blooded beings, and Jayne could be predatory as an artist and
recorder of impressions. When it came to making images, clarity won out
over charity, and she was more (1950–2009)
By Margaret D. Stetz
concerned with revelation than with flattery. She shot from and often through the heart.
Cancer clipped Jayne’s wings. It left her earthbound and home-centered. She had to give up her beloved darkroom and move, in a sense, into a darker room altogether. Her apartment grew nest-like, while remaining in every way an artist’s construction—an assemblage of trash and treasure, seemingly random, yet ordered meticulously according to a design known only to her. For more than twenty years, pain—both physical and mental—caged her. She escaped it
only by focusing on something else. Instinctively, she turned to the camera for help, but with a changed vision. The need to obtain truth still drove her; so too did her new desire to attain compassion. Jayne now saw her surroundings through a lens of suffering and with a spiritual acceptance of impermanence achieved in Buddhist practice, linking her own experience with that of all mortal things. Their fragility made them precious to her, and her photographs made them
beautiful to the spectator. Her mature art is, like her early work, the product of a bird’s-eye view. It is also profoundly loving and humane.
46-46 Vernon Blvd in Long Island City, NY
NW Corner of Vernon Blvd and 47th Avenue
Friday & Saturday 12–7
Sunday 12–5
#7 Subway Vernon-Jackson Stop
Walk 4 blocks North on Vernon Blvd.
#7 Subway Court Square (PS 1)
South on Jackson 2 blocks to 46th Rd
West 2 blocks to Vernon,
Left 1 block to 47th Ave.
E Subway 1st stop in Queens, 23rd St./Ely
(exit at rear of train onto 21st St.,
walk west to Vernon Blvd.)
Car: Midtown Tunnel, LIE, 59th Street Bridge
A Photography Exhibition
Sunday, May 17
1–4 pm
Art-O-Mat Gallery, LIC, NY
