Adventures of Odysseus
Artemis Jegart
September 25 – December 19, 2025
Santa Fe Community College
6401 Richards Avenue
Santa Fe, New Mexico, 87508
Freddy is pleased to present Adventures of Odysseus by Artemis Jegart (b. 1927) at Santa Fe Community College. The exhibition focuses on twelve individual works created in 1968. The work was publicly exhibited at Watergate Galleries, Inc., Washington D.C. in 1972. Subsequently, Adventures of Odysseus remained privately on view in the home of the artist until her death in 2015.
Special thanks to the artist’s daughter, Rudi Artemis Jegart, as well as Shane Tolbert and Linda Cassel in the Fine Arts Program, all of whom helped make this exhibition possible. Text below by Katya Kirilloff.
I am five or six years old. I have come to dinner with my parents and sister to the house of a family friend. It’s a typical 1970’s style suburban home in Frederick, Maryland, seemingly no different from the neighbors along the street. We park and walk up the concrete walkway to the front door where we are greeted by our host Artemis Jegart. The foyer is dark and dramatic. My sister and I are guided down the stone floor hallway to a room full of vintage clothing. We are given bathing suits to change into that feel like costumes (hand-me-downs from Artemis’ two daughters). We shed everything from the outside world and are completely under Artemis’s spell. Now that we are appropriately dressed for dinner, we are led into the dining room.
I am floating on my back in a deep emerald pool in Artemis’s dining room. I lift my head up and I hear the soothing noises of my parents and our hosts talking, laughing, silverware and glasses clanking gently. Behind them is an entire wall covered in oyster shells, each with the mother of pearl metallic inside exposed. Sporadically throughout the wall a shell is turned to create a shelf. There are lit candles on all these little shelves. The wall dances with candlelight. It is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. I dip my ears back under water and turn my back to the dinner scene and there, high up on the opposite wall in a row, is the Adventures of Odysseus.
Twelve squares of concrete embedded with shells each depicting a character or piece of a story like an ancient comic book. This is my introduction to The Odyssey. There is Polyphemus, the towering cyclops, dominating the square with his massive chest and shoulders, while Aeolus with puckered lips and full cheek seems to blow forth a mighty wind. What strikes me most is Penelope, weeping tears for her long- lost husband, tears so endless that with a touch of humor, Artemis added a spigot.
As Circe welcomes Odysseus,
She opened her gleaming doors at once and stepped forth, inviting them all in, and in they went, all innocence. Only Eurylochus stayed behind—he sensed a trap…She ushered them in to sit on high backed chairs, then she mixed them a potion—cheese, barley and pale honey mulled in Pramnian wine—but into the brew she stirred her wicked drugs to wipe from their memories any thought of home. Once they’d drained the bowls she filled, suddenly she struck with her wand, drove them into her pigsties, all of them bristling into swine—with grunts, snouts—even their bodies, yes, and only the men’s minds stayed steadfast as before. So off, they went to their pens, sobbing, squealing as Circe flung them acorns, cornel nuts and mast, common fodder for hogs that root and roll in mud.
The Odyssey as translated by Robert Fagles.
Artemis Jegart earned her BA (1949) and her MA (1953) from Florida State University. In 1956, Jegart was named an outstanding new talent by Art in America. She created a mural of the Capitol Center for Tallahassee’s original Municipal Airport which was dedicated April 23, 1961, a mural later re-created and exhibited at Tallahassee International Airport. In 1969, Jegart moved to Frederick, Maryland. In 1993, the artist relocated to Lamy, New Mexico.