GLYNDE.- For the first time in its 160-year history, France’s Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts has awarded its prestigious annual prize Puvis de Chavannes Prize to a non-French national. Artist Jana Nicole an American-born UK-resident, is the recipient. On 1st December her monumental botanical artwork The Glade, a 3M x 2M hand-cut installation is shown at Glynde Place, a historical Sussex’ house, brought directly from Orangerie du Sénat Paris.

Jana Nicole is renowned for her exuberant mixed-media collages that fuse traditions of Ikebana, papercutting and relief sculpture with the raucous energy of pop art. These explosive bouquets are at once eye-grabbing and exquisitely detailed; it takes her many hours of painstaking work to compose the myriad of elements that make up a single piece.

Her Botanical Troupe series – mix photographic and hand-drawn imagery with organic materials to explore the hidden worlds beneath our feet: mosses, mushrooms, fungi and the extraordinary mycelial networks that connect the natural world. As a site-specific response to the Sussex location, Jana Nicole will incorporate local flora into her installation.

Michel King, President of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts (SNBA) said: “Jana Nicole digs beneath our feet and brings unusual perspectives to the surface, highlighting our connections to the living soil. Her artwork evolves around the transformation of paper, branches, moss, roots. She plays with living materials and cut paper to create imaginative landscapes, yet real.” He continued: “[She] untangles, entangles, mixes and gets us into a meditative state. By awarding her the Puvis de Chavannes Prize [2022], the SNBA rewards an ode to life, a look at a powerful, subtle, fragile, sublime ecosystem.”

Jana Nicole is also currently exhibiting at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge as part of the ‘Defaced! Money Conflict Protest’ exhibition. She has exhibited at: Saatchi Gallery, London; ArtCenter DTLA, Los Angeles; Saatchi Arts The Other Art Fair, London, New York and LA; Roy’s Art Fair; Brighton Art Fair; The Gallery@Oxo, Oxo Tower Wharf; Gavin Turk & Deborah Curtis’ House of Fairy Tales, plus galleries throughout the UK.