Jenna Horner prefers dead flowers.
Her studio — a subleased room in a friend’s Gainesville home — is full of flowers hung upside-down, pinned to twine and dried along the walls.
A chest filled with fabric collected from customers sits under a loft bed, and an easel holds works in progress an arm’s length away.
Her paint-covered desk is littered with scraps, prints, samples, an Apple computer and a pot of homemade paste.
The voice of Aretha Franklin vibrates from her record player and out the window through which a spring breeze makes its way inside.
The 24-year-old sees art in a different light. Dead flowers and pieces of tattered cloth can be arranged into a story that says something about the materials’ owner.
“Part of the fun for me is kind of chasing that narrative and finding something really special,” she said.
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Horner’s family moved to Gainesville when she was 10.
She considers Alachua County her true home, because it’s where most of her memories took place.
After graduating from Kanapaha Middle School and Buchholz High School, Horner decided it was time for something new, so she moved to Orlando and attended Valencia College.
“I didn’t know what I wanted to do, and I wanted to explore,” she said. “I felt like I would learn more by going somewhere else.”
Horner quickly learned she hated the city.
She missed the small-town feel of Gainesville, where she recognized people at the grocery store and had a network of friends and family.
“I’m a big fan of simplicity in general — in my work and in life,” she said. “Being in Orlando, things were just so much more complicated. People weren’t very friendly, and it just felt like a very temporary place.”
In 2012, she took a break from Valencia and took a summer oil painting class at Santa Fe College.
Horner learned more in one summer than she had in all her time in Orlando. Her professor, Dan Stepp, then convinced her to apply for UF’s advanced painting program.
Her life changed with the opening of an acceptance letter.
From 2013 to 2014, she studied painting and perfected her passion. Her last project as a student would inspire her career to come.
“I was experimenting with working with multiple materials and implementing my old things in my paintings,” she said. “I found when I graduated that I wanted to kind of continue experimenting.”
Now, two years after graduation, Horner has made a career out of experimenting with art.
Painting with a Twist hired Horner to teach people the art of painting on canvas and drinking wine.
She also sells her work at Gainesville art markets, Artwalk and directly to customers who commission her.
“I’m not a 9-to-5 person,” she said. “I like being scattered. I feel more comfortable that way.”
Jenna Horner, left, shows samples of the art she is making for her yoga instructor, Samantha Jones. Horner is a Gainesville-based multimedia artist who incorporates people’s belongings into her works.
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To Horner, art is another form of storytelling.
When local sisters lost their mother to cancer several years ago, they saved sentimental materials to help them remember.
Horner said the project is her most sentimental yet, and that she will make the sisters something that lasts forever.
Her yoga instructor, Samantha Jones, found fabric at a friend’s garage sale and commissioned Horner to use the material years later.
The friend was moving away, and Jones wanted something to keep them close.
“I kept holding on to it for three years,” Jones said. “I didn’t know how to get rid of it, because I liked it so much.”
Horner offered to incorporate the fabric into a painting. She often uses fabric as a stencil or to add texture to paintings.
“It’s just kind of interesting because there’s that repetition of, ‘It’s going to be in my house and I’m supporting another artist by commissioning the painting,’” Jones said. “It’s sentimental to me in that way.”
Creekside Community Church recently commissioned Horner to collect materials from the entire congregation and use them in a big painting for the church.
She said it will be her first time creating a materials painting for an entire community of people.
“I’m hoping I can find some really great stories in there,” Horner said. “I’m collecting materials in the next couple weeks and then I’m gonna get crankin’ on that one.”
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Pictured are the dried flowers Horner has collected from customers and hung to preserve them for use in art.
Sometimes Horner struggles, but she wouldn’t change a thing.
Her peers said pursuing an art degree was a waste of time and money. She said seven people enrolled in her program and less than half now work in the field full-time.
Many people, she said, quickly find out whether art should be their career or hobby.
“There’s a really fine line there, and I think it comes down to discipline.”
Though she didn’t sell a single piece in February and her car broke down the same month, Horner said she stays optimistic.
“It’s tough, but I don’t think ‘Why art?’ has ever been a question for me,” she said. “It’s always been, ‘This is what I do. This is who I am.’”
In March, she sold 12 pieces.
Horner said she prefers to do what she loves and do it well. The future, she said, is bright.
“I have definitely had moments where I have kicked a painting down a staircase, sat on the floor and cried wondering where rent would come from,” she said. “But even then, my brain has never even come to a place where I thought that there was something else out there for me.”
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Horner examines one of her pieces in her Gainesville studio; though she makes art to sell, she also makes art for pleasure, like the piece she holds.
