Montana-based Jane Waggoner Deschner has been an exhibiting artist for over forty years; for twenty years her medium has been the found family photograph. Her work has been shown in numerous venues including Robert Mann Gallery, NYC; University of Michigan–Dearborn; Missoula Art Museum, MT; Churchill Arts, Fallon, NV; and other regional galleries and museums. Her immersive installation, “Remember me. a collective narrative in found words and photographs,” premiered at the Yellowstone Art Museum, closing in January, 2023. It traveled through Montana Art Gallery Directors Association to the Gallery of Fine Arts, University of Montana, and WaterWorks Museum in Miles City. Early 2025 it showed at the Museum of Art | Fort Collins, CO. Recently her work has been juried into three Kris Graves Projects photo books (“Solace,” “On Death” and “Of Covid: Collective Trauma”) and selected for online photography exhibits by, among others, Humble Arts Foundation, Lenscratch, Midwest Nice Art, The Curated Fridge and Photo Trouvée. The Montana Arts Council chose her for an Artist Innovation Award in 2019–20, an ARPA grant in 2022 and a Strategic Investment Grant in 2025.
Her work has been supported by numerous residencies across the US and in Canada and Mexico, including Anderson Ranch Arts Center, CO; Ucross Foundation, WY; The Banff Centre, CA; Atlantic Center for the Arts, FL; Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, VA; and Santa Fe Art Institute, AZ. Time spent working in these unique places forms an important part of her practice.
She earned an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts in 2002. After growing up in Kansas, she moved to Montana in 1977. In addition to being a mixed media artist, she works as an exhibition installer, graphic designer, photographer, curator, instructor and picture framer.
Since childhood, I’ve been “making friends with death,” knowing it can come to anyone at any time. In my “memoji mori” series I hand-embroider skeleton hands—guided by emoji gestures—into vernacular photos. Susan Sontag wrote, “All photographs are memento mori.” Roland Barthes added, “Every photograph is a certificate of presence.” Like emojis, photographs are wordless, open to interpretation. My embroidered skeleton hands: reclaim and transform photos by adding new layers of meaning; intensify emotional signals; invite deeper interpretation; and offer, as Sontag said, “…inexhaustible invitations to deduction, speculation, and fantasy.”
Her work has been supported by numerous residencies across the US and in Canada and Mexico, including Anderson Ranch Arts Center, CO; Ucross Foundation, WY; The Banff Centre, CA; Atlantic Center for the Arts, FL; Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, VA; and Santa Fe Art Institute, AZ. Time spent working in these unique places forms an important part of her practice.
She earned an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts in 2002. After growing up in Kansas, she moved to Montana in 1977. In addition to being a mixed media artist, she works as an exhibition installer, graphic designer, photographer, curator, instructor and picture framer.
Since childhood, I’ve been “making friends with death,” knowing it can come to anyone at any time. In my “memoji mori” series I hand-embroider skeleton hands—guided by emoji gestures—into vernacular photos. Susan Sontag wrote, “All photographs are memento mori.” Roland Barthes added, “Every photograph is a certificate of presence.” Like emojis, photographs are wordless, open to interpretation. My embroidered skeleton hands: reclaim and transform photos by adding new layers of meaning; intensify emotional signals; invite deeper interpretation; and offer, as Sontag said, “…inexhaustible invitations to deduction, speculation, and fantasy.”