The chosen ones

The isolation is startling.

A black-and-white donkey stands, riddled with arrows, surrounded by a stark-white background. This piece by Jennifer Nelson was selected by juror Glen Helfand—art critic and professor—for Axis Gallery’s eighth national juried competition.

Nelson was one of 31 artists chosen out of a pool of 192 entrants. She was also picked to be in the gallery’s juried show in 2011, although the North Dakota-based artist has yet to visit Sacramento herself. Her home state, however, known for its wide expanses, instructs the subjects (often animals or furniture) and the amount of negative space in her work: “I like to think [it] is a reaction to my observations concerning the arrangement of things in Eastern North Dakota,” she said. “It’s not crowded here, there’s a lot of space.”

See her work and that of the other 30 chosen artists at Axis through Sunday, August 25.