Country Roads

MIM Gallery
2636 S La Cienega Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90034 www.mim.gallery
424.299.8223 | info@mim.gallery

Country Roads
Gabrielle Jennings
September 10–October 1, 2016
Gallery Hours: Tuesday–Saturday, 11–6 pm Opening Reception: Saturday, September 10, 6–9pm

MIM Gallery is pleased to present Country Roads, a solo exhibition by Los Angeles-based artist Gabrielle Jennings. This is the artist’s first show at MIM Gallery.

• In the winter of 1969, Gabrielle Jennings’ parents drove from the San Francisco Bay area to Warwick, New York to join a community devoted to the study of G.I. Gurdjieff’s teachings.

• “..from 1970 to 1980, 8.4 million people moved from urban to rural areas in the U.S.”1

• In the 1970’s, America’s rural population growth exceeded that of metropolitan areas—an occurrence virtually without precedent in the nation’s history.2

• G. I. Gurdjieff was an influential, early 20th century Russian mystic, spiritual teacher, and composer who taught that we lack a unified mind-body consciousness and thus live in a state of hypnotic “waking sleep.”3

• Gurdjieff’s teachings use a symbol consisting of a triangle and an irregular hexagram.4

• Gurdjieff’s method was called “The Work.” Writers, artists, and people from all professions dug wells, chopped down trees, and broke stones by day, while taking part in meetings and sacred dances by night.5

• The Gurdjieff community practiced crafts including weaving, ceramics, and batik. The ‘back-to-the-land movement was in full swing – members of the community gardened, kept chickens and goats, pickled and preserved, made yogurt and bread, and tapped maple trees for syrup.

• In 1975 Jennings’ parents took the “est” training, their marriage dissolved, and her mother moved Jennings and her siblings to Los Angeles where she watched TV for the first time.

• AnAugust2016YouTuberesultforthesearch,TakeMeHome,CountryRoads,yielded616,000results.

1 Population Reference Bureau, August 1999, Vol. 1 No. 3, Reports on America

2 Reports on Rural America, Volume 1, Number 1, 2006, Carsey Institute, University of New Hampshire

3 Ouspensky, P. D. (1977). In Search of the Miraculous. pp. 312–313.

4 In Search of the Miraculous: Fragments of an Unknown Teaching, 1949, (reprinted 1977), PD Ouspensky, Routledge and Keegan Paul Ltd, London , pp. 285-295, 376-8.

5 P.L. Travers, “George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff, ” Traditional Studies Press, Toronto: 1973, first published as “Gurdjieff” in Man, Myth and Magic: Encyclopedia of the Supernatural , London: Purnell, 1970–1971, serialized in 111 issues, then bound as 12 volumes.