Jerry Kunkel and Jennifer Jarnot are the artists currently showing at 6 Gallery, 716 1/2 B Mass. Their work will be featured as part of the Red Balloon To Do event.

Memories

Artist Jerry Kunkel is a champion of the overlooked.

Mundane objects found on a table, in a drawer or along a kitchen countertop take on great significance and splendor when rendered on his canvas.

Take a leftover dessert, for instance.

“Does anybody really look at a cheap pie plate from Dillons after there’s only one piece left? You don’t,” Kunkel says of a painting titled “Basic Food Group #5” that depicts a nearly empty tin container with a slushy slice of cherry pie remaining.

“But my hope is that everybody who sees that painting looks at their pie plate again in a new way.”

Also sharing in his art – and home – is wife Jenn Jarnot, a fellow full-time painter whose work is equally innovative and alluring. The couple relocated to Lawrence last year from Boulder, Colo., where Kunkel retired from his job as professor of fine arts at the University of Colorado.

Now the pair is showcasing their vivid, captivating and prolific work to this adopted city in grand style.

Kunkel and Jarnot will speak about their art Saturday during a gallery talk at 6 Gallery, 716 1/2 B Mass. The event precedes the Red Balloon To Do art walk, in which 6 Gallery is among the five participating venues.

The whole of 6 Gallery is currently consumed by the couple’s work. Kunkel’s is installed on the south side of the building, with Jarnot’s occupying the north. Despite a clear diversity in style and approach, the pieces somehow complement each other, creating the impression of one continuous piece of work.

Oddly enough, none of the art resulted from collaborating together.

“The (cohesiveness) has a lot to do with being raised in similar ways. And we’re both avid collectors. We love flea markets and antique stores,” Jarnot says.

“I was raised in a strict Roman Catholic family, and it was almost like growing up in the 1950s.”

“Whereas I actually grew up in the 1950s,” adds Kunkel, laughing.

Lured by nostalgia

Sally Piller, owner of 6 Gallery, says the pair’s creativity is matched by their professionalism.

“They’re each such good artists. They each have their own point of view and their own look about their art, but they make a really dynamic collaboration,” Piller says.

She describes their exhibition – which the artists hung themselves – as being “fun, playful and very smart.”

“Their colors go beautifully together, and the thing that ties them together that’s so cool is all their work has a real nostalgic feel,” she says.

Jenn’s pieces in particular utilize vintage pop iconography such as comic books, coloring books and advertising material.

“I’m drawn to antique 1930s, ’40s and ’50s children’s books,” Jarnot says. “That started when I was a director of a preschool. I found myself in that role of a mother watching 70 children. They actually had books from those decades, and I would read them during lunch break.”

For an unnamed collection of 15 pieces with titles such as “Things Are In Tip-Top Shape” and “Jackass in Suburbia,” Jarnot took a 1930s coloring book, scanned it into a computer, then added color. Once printed, she put a piece of clear Mylar over the top of it with her personal drawings. The result is a mixture of her own story with the original text and images.

Jarnot, who previously taught painting and drawing at the University of Colorado, recalls that her mother was visiting and became struck by the familiarity of these pieces.

“Then she realized she had that exact same coloring book when she was younger,” Jarnot says. “She remembered every page.”

Choosing Lawrence

Kunkel and Jarnot selected Lawrence for his post-retirement locale because his daughter lives in the city, where she teaches communication at Kansas University.

“Compared to Boulder, there are a lot of similarities,” Kunkel explains.

“It’s a small, university community, and not a lot of galleries but a lot of artists. Communities like Lawrence that support the arts really do attract a lot of artists, musicians, filmmakers. Boulder is in the same position to Denver as Lawrence is to Kansas City. The real art scene happens in Denver. Whatever happens in Boulder is tangential to Denver. It’s a little like that here.”

Fortunately, there are at least enough venues to devote space to the couple’s work. And they admit they have enough pieces at home to mount an entirely different exhibition or two.

“Everybody loves it. You walk in and go, ‘Wow,’ says Piller.

“The feedback has been all good – except for one person who didn’t like the cherry pie painting. But that was just because she didn’t like cherry pie.”